Sea life: cruising after COVID

"I never want to see that ship ruby princess ever again," shrieked the Premier of NSW almost 3 years ago.

What on earth was she thinking? That an inanimate object could bring her career down any more than a toaster could've done earlier that day if her toast was burnt?

Nothing to do with the people in charge, the operators, nothing to see here and be assured, the senior bureaucrats are skilled doctors in virology, media and spin.

Little did Premier Gladys nor Dictator Dan know or realise that passenger ships were the ideal centres for quarantine as they had been for over 200 years, and instead of making them anchor in the already allocated quarantine anchorages around most ports in the nation, they and other inexperienced Premiers shooed them away and nominated their quarantine centres in their CBD Hotels. How dumb!

This demonizing of cruise ships of course brought a screeching halt to my addictive habit of cruising under the guise of working, at least 3 times a year.

So, a couple of weeks ago I made a last-minute booking for a ship going from Sydney to Melbourne then round New Zealand. This was a dangerous undertaking for Queenslanders as we knew that Melbourne was now firmly the epicentre of green madness and New Zealand was spiraling down the socialist path with a burgeoning bureaucracy and the accompanying national poverty. We know this because hundreds of thousands of escapees arriving from Victoria and NZ have been blocking up our Queensland roadways in the last few months

But was I prepared for the post Covid upgrades of border security, biosecurity and the created armies of bureaucrats by socialist leaders? The first security encounter was amusing to me in that a retired Swedish couple in front of us had their luggage checked and where security pulled out 3 objects obviously beeping the scanner. Two were miniature metal replica souvenirs of the KL Tower and the Sydney Tower, and the 3^rd item was a miniature steamer to unwrinkled clothes. The first 2 could have been used for stabbing had the couple been young and athletic, but contrary to logic they confiscated the clothes steamer. Perhaps they thought the ship's laundry would be under commercial threat?

To get the ship out of White Bay my ship pilotage friends said "We just stick her inta astern, spin her around into Darling Harbour and head out under the Harbour bridge, hoping that the sea levels haven't risen since this morning or else we may hit it." I knew the 54 metre bridge clearance was safe.

Wearing a CPAC cap and carrying a copy of the Spectator around all the public areas of the ship for the 2 days down to Melbourne confirmed my discovery that most of the 2,000 passengers had flown in from the US, and thankfully no sign of local left-wing loonies, greens or teals.

The Melbourne visit broke the splendid news that Jacinda Ardern (or as my pals from the marine industry call her "Just in'ta Astern" the same as she has done to New Zealand) had resigned ! This resignation was surely her reaction to my impending visit and my notified land claim for all of the South Island to be given back to Scotland.

Yes, you may scorn, but it was only the Scots that were brave enough to face the constant rain, cold weather and sheep with unfortunate looks, to develop the place. It was in 1848 that the first large contingent of Scots arrived and created the town they named Dunedin (Gaelic term for Edinburgh) and developed the community, built the hospitals, schools and churches. Looking at the old photographs at the museum there was not much there before that.

Of course, I hadn't realized the depths of despair that New Zealand had plummeted into and the minute the ship arrived in Dunedin's Port Chalmers she was boarded with brigades of uniformed bureaucrats from different agencies making sure that us "temporary invaders" would toe the line.