Australia 2026

Australia

March 2026

We visited Australia at the end of March 2026. Something you probably don’t know about Australia: it only became a British colony in 1788 when the Americans got their freedom and England therefore had no where to send their convicted prisoners! Australia was discovered by the Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon in 1606. The Dutch named the land New Holland after the blue tractor encountered in the American farmlands, but didn’t settle it. For almost 200 years, England had been selling their convicts, political prisoners, and prisoners of war (estimated between 50,000 and 120,000) into servitude on plantations in Maryland and Virginia. But they lost that outlet for their overcrowded prisons by 1788 with USA independence, so they claimed New Holland and renamed it Australia. Australia was the English version of the Latin phrase “Terra Australis”, or “Southern Land”. Europeans had used this term since the 1500’s theorizing that a continent existed to the south.

As I start this journal, we are in the second day cruising on the Voyager of the Seas out of Brisbane. I have to say the most interesting part of this journey so far was starting it. The US Congress is again blocking funding, this time to the Department of Homeland Security and, subsequently, the Transportation Security Administration. After weeks of not getting paid, TSA started experiencing call-ins and resignations. As a result, wait times in Houston’s IAH airport were horrific on the Monday before we left, averaging over four hours. Our flight to San Francisco was on Tuesday at 6:30 pm. We couldn’t afford to miss the flight, so we ordered up an Uber at 9:30 am. ICE had been ordered to IAH to assist. I can’t comment with first-hand knowledge of what Monday was like, or how things changed on Wednesday, but on Tuesday, March 24, we walked past 70-100 ICE agents and only two offered assistance on where to proceed to get to the start of the TSA security queue. Most of the rest were standing around in groups or playing on their phone. A group of ICE agents is referred to as a “deportation.” IAH employees and some remaining TSA agents did all the traffic control very well. In the end, we actually got through security in almost exactly an hour. We were lucky. I talked to a friend that went through IAH later that day and their wait was close to four hours. At the gate, we talked to two people that had come in for a weekend wedding and missed their flight home afterwards due to the security lines the day before. They had to rebook.

I refuse to get political except where common sense rules and no sane person could possibly disagree. Case in point – TSA is not getting paid because of Congress. I don’t care which side of the argument you are on, or how justified you are in your reasons. All I want to see is that if the President or Congress withhold payrolls to a government agency, then their payroll and the payroll of their staffs should also be suspended. Period. There is no argument to supersede this logic. Plus the poor buggers not getting paid (and I am FAR from a TSA fan!) are making a fraction of what the leaders of our country are getting paid and are much more dependent on each paycheck. And they don’t have lobbies wining, dining, and bribing them. If you disagree with this, please see the first sentence in this paragraph. And seek help!

We arrived in Brisbane at 6:30 am, 36 hours after we left home. Other than the IAH security delay and arriving eight and a half hours before our first flight, the rest of the trip was 100% on schedule and completely uneventful. Something I have learned to not assume in today’s travel world and to appreciate. We spent the afternoon as zombies walking Brisbane looking for brains. Sites. Looking at sites. The next morning we took an Uber to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. This is a great place to get up close and personal with the non-lethal Australian native species. Both of them. All the other species here - the snakes, spiders, crocodiles, sharks, jellyfish, to name a few - will kill you. There is a huge area of several acres…sorry this is metric…with several kilograms of kangaroos and emus that you can feed. The emus were stand-offish, but some of the kangaroos could be coaxed to eat from my hand. There were koalas in pens everywhere throughout the park, and one station allowed direct interaction with a koala. I didn’t realize they sleep 18-22 hours a day. They only wake long enough to eat. So it’s kinda like when we had teenagers at home.

After a couple of days in Brisbane, we boarded the Voyager of the Seas. This ship holds up to 4,200 passengers. Our trip was at full capacity and also had an additional 40,000 pre-teen kids. We learned that all the costumed characters from The Wiggles were on board and performing regular shows. This is the most obnoxious kids venue ever created. It originated in Australia in the late 90’s before it spread worldwide, like COVID, only with even worse results. The four guys that started this fiasco and their accompanying costumed characters make Barney the Dinosaur seem like an entertainer along the lines of The Rolling Stones. But small children are mesmerized by them and want to watch them in endless loops. The Wiggles have been outlawed in most red USA states because it was determined that they were being used as a form of birth control. Married couples became aware that a pregnancy meant the same thing as inviting The Wiggles into your living room for hours on end each day once a child arrived and decided to abstain en masse.

Most Americans reading this don’t appreciate being in a huge society where all traffic passes on the right. This ship is full of Australians that insist on walking on the left (“wrong”) side of the hall or walkways just like they drive. After two days at sea, we arrive in Luganville, Vanuatu. We were delayed getting off the ship due to a 7.4 earthquake overnight, but finally got to tour the town. Vanuatu is a right (“correct”) side traffic country. But the Aussies insisted on still walking to the left, causing chaos on the sidewalks in and around the small town. Luganville swells from 18,000 residents to over 24,000 when passengers, kids, and crew visit the town. And our visit occurred the morning after one of the stronger earthquakes in years shook the previous evening. It’s like even the earth was trying to save Luganville from our onslaught!

Speaking of earthquakes, I’m not lucky like you Pacific Rim residents. I have only experienced a 2.4 quake in 2002 in Cairo, Egypt. It was pretty cool. Late evening and I’m working in my hotel room when I feel swaying and the water in my cup on the desk starts sloshing back and forth until it actually spills over. You probably just had the same thought I had back then: how in the heck did a tyrannosaurus rex from Jurassic Park get on the 24th floor of the Cairo Marriott? Anyway, I don’t want anyone, including myself, hurt or anyone’s homes or businesses damaged. (Only Congress. OK, slightly. At least shake some sense into them!) But if an earthquake has to occur, I would like to be there to see what it’s like. I can’t believe I missed this one by only a few hours. Fortunately, there didn’t appear to be any damage in the areas we visited, but the town was largely without water and electricity. As a Houstonian who relies on CenterPoint Energy for electricity, I felt immediately at home with no power.

We visited Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, the next day, then on to Mystery Island. Legend has it that all spirits pass thru Mystery Island on the way to the afterlife and no one lives on the island or stays overnight. But there is also no record of it being called that before a visit by Queen Elizabeth in the 1970’s. Regardless, it is a small island with beaches on all sides and the entire parameter is walkable. It was used as an airstrip by the USA during WWII. This was the stop I ranked in advance of the cruise as the best. So it was canceled. We anchored next to the island and kept delaying the tenders (Chicken strips you ride to the island) until finally an announcement was made that the wind and waves were too high. Actually they weren’t that high, but people that have no business stepping onto a tender due to physical restrictions (using a walker and barely able to navigate the hallways on the ship) would not have been able to safely board the tenders, so therefore Royal Caribbean canceled the stop for the 90% that were able-bodied and we sailed away.

Our last stop before returning to Brisbane was Noumea, New Caledonia. We took a two-and-a-half hour (per the brochure) paid excursion around town to see the sites in only one hour. (Probably a metric time versus imperial time issue.) New Caledonia, at least the parts we sped thru or walked around afterwards, was immaculate. Virtually no litter or vegetation overgrowth and all the buildings were either new or old and well maintained. All of the water around Vanuatu and New Caledonia was pristine turquoise and extremely clear. Open swimming around the town of Noumea is not recommended due to sharks. They put up steel nets around one of the many harbors and inlets where locals can swim and snorkel and sharks can only watch and go hungry. New Caledonia is a French state. It was settled in 1858 by the French as a penal colony. Sound familiar? Maybe the USA should bundle up all their prisoners and send them to a foreign colony. Like Mississippi.

After nine days, we disembarked at Brisbane and went straight to the airport and on to Sydney. The most famous site in Sydney is the Opera House. But every photo I’ve seen of it is from the sea or across the bay. We walked up to the front of it and from that angle it looks like three Conquistador Helmets stacked together. Based on American Education Standards, probably only 10% of the general population would know what the heck a Conquistador is, or what their helmets looked like. So, for the unwashed readers, while he had an outrageous French accent, John Cleese was wearing one of these type helmets when he taunted King Arthur in that historical classic: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. Looking at the Sydney Opera House, I expected John Cleese to appear and taunt me a second time. Perhaps I should be more concerned by those that don’t know what Opera is. No, it is not a lady that use to be on TV with a last name of Winfrey. It is a large lady or a bearded man singing extraordinarily loud and painfully in a foreign language, such as Italian or Cajun, that is completely undecipherable and everyone on stage is dramatically upset or playing dead. Kind of like watching the Kardashians.

We only stayed in Sydney for one night before boarding our next ship that would take us all the way to Los Angeles. We celebrated our last night in Australia with traditional McDonald cheeseburgers. After all that awful unseasoned fancy-pants food on the Voyager of the Seas, these were an exquisite delicacy!

So I’ll end this here. Our next journey home on Discovery Princess is documented, or will be, under New Zealand. Sounds like a real fairy tale you won’t want to miss!

Hooroo!

G’Day Mate!

Keith