If This is Friday, This Must Be Thursday Island

It was Friday here, but it was Thursday "back home"; I learn about native culture and meet a native celebrity. Rita stayed on the ship as she continues to recover from acute bronchitis.

The Viking Sky anchored several miles from the pier at Thursday Island, so transferring most of the 800+ passengers (minus Rita) by tender to the pier was a drawn out process requiring four tenders, two of which I’m told went out of service prior to the afternoon pickup, which was drawn out even further. If I’d known exactly how long, I wouldn’t have spent the last 90 minutes of my shore time on the pier!

(The tenders are the motorized and enclosed lifeboats mounted on the side of the ship, each able to hold more than 100 passengers.)

That 90-minute wait on the pier gave me time to find Hans Ahwang, one of the native islanders hosting our visit, whose image was on a t-shirt I purchased. (The sales lady clued me in that he was here.) He’s a professional dancer who has dedicated his life to bringing Torres Strait culture to the world. He told me that he visited Denver once, where he taught local ballet companies Torres Stait Islander dances. “No dancing on point!” he told them. I Googled “Hans Ahwang dancer” and the entire first page of Google was filled with different websites and videos about him as both actor and dancer. Here’s a picture of me wearing that t-shirt next to the man himself.

From the pier we walked just a few blocks to the Port Kennedy Community Hall, where an elder wearing her park ranger uniform spoke about the 250-island archipelago that is the home of Torres Strait Islanders. Thursday Island is the capital of that distinct section of Queensland separating continental Australia from Papua New Guinea. Although they are typically linked with Aborigines, with whom many of them have intermarried, Torres Stait Islanders are a distinct culture and even have their own flag. The elder spoke to us in front of that flag:

The green represents the land, the black represents the people, the blue represents the sea, the 5-pointed star represents the five major island clusters, and the u-shaped symbol represents the dhari feathered headdress worn in ceremonies.

I noticed that the auditorium was cooled by three wall-mounted mini-splits, one of which is visible in the above picture.

After the elder spoke, a group of high schoolers performed a half dozen native dances which tell stories rooted in their culture. Here’s a video of one. They were accompanied by a drummer using sticks on a large tin can and a man drumming with his hands on a Torres Island drum which I was told is unique to these islands:

The ride on the tender back to the ship got pretty exciting due to very heavy seas once we got some distance from the pier. You can see the effect on the tender by looking at the horizon through the window across from where I was sitting as well as the waves outside my window in this video:

The rocky boat ride was made enjoyable by getting to know two fellow passengers from North Carolina — David and Abby Williams. David is a furniture designer who works primarily in wood. He has been doing this work, freelance, under the name Wit’s End Design Studio, for 40 years. He doesn’t have a website, but here’s his LinkedIn profile. His favorite assignment was designing the chairs used in the US Capitol when Ronald Reagan lay in state. It took only 9 days to design and build them. Here’s a picture of David and Abby:

By the way, Thursday Island got its name from a British captain who named three islands Wednesday, Thursday and Friday based on the days of the week he came across them in 1848. The tribal name for Thursday Island is Waibene. The town itself is named Port Kennedy.

This morning, Rita and I enjoyed breakfast in the World Cafe where two of our favorite waitstaff waited on us. They are a married couple from Zimbabwe named Tabeth and Leo. Usually they don’t work together, so this was unusual. Tabeth works every meal in the World Cafe; Leo works dinner in Manfredi’s Italian Restaurant on Deck 1 and other meals in a different section of the World Cafe.

Everyone on the ship, including the crew, is wondering whether and when the home office in L.A. will re-route our world cruise around Africa instead of through the embattled Red Sea. Looking at Viking.com, I notice that Viking has ocean cruises everywhere in the world except around Africa, although I’m told that Viking’s second world cruise back in 2016 or thereabouts did go around Africa. I can picture the home office working feverishly to select ports of call and assemble excursions in each of those ports before announcing the route change. Because Viking is noted for taking great care of customers, it’s expected that passengers who don’t want to go around Africa will be accommodated in some way. It’s important for the new itinerary to be attractive in order to minimize the number of passengers who want to bail. (No pun intended.) Hence the delay in what seems to be an inevitable announcement. If we do go around Africa, we’ll lose all the ports in the Mediterranean, not just the Red Sea, in order to get to London on time. I hope we don’t skip India!

That’s all for today. Bye for now.