We began our four sea days between Cairns and Darwin with sail out along Trinity Inlet with the city on one side and mangrove on the other.

We grabbed dinner from the lido and stayed on the aft deck for a beautiful sunset to start our six days.

This segment was billed at “The Great Barrier Reef Experience.”  Really it was four sea days.  No complaint from me, I love sea days.  But we could not see much of the reef in that it was under us.  We sailed outside the reef past Green Island toward the Coral Sea and then the next morning back inside between the reef and the Australian mainland.  While we could not see the reef we did see some sandy cays to the starboard.

We had taken on a coral pilot, Andrew Chai.  He is from Singapore and had been a port pilot there but wanted something more interesting.  I think he got it.  He lectured us about piloting along the reef and discussed several maritime incidents on the reef and what they learned from them.

The most interesting part of the “Great Barrier Reef Experience” came an hour after midday on the second sea day when we sailed through Torres Strait.  It runs between New Guinea and the York Peninsulas on the Australian Mainland.  It was first transited by a European, a Spaniard named Luis Vaz de Torres, in 1606.  His transit was forgotten by the world until his maps were discovered by British cartographers 1769.  In 1770 Scottish geographer Alexander Darlymple named the strait in his honor.  The indigenous name for the strait is Zenadth Kes.  We sailed between several islands that mark the passage. 

The strait is where the Pacific and Indian Oceans meet.  Their tides are on different cycles making for tricky currents of up to eight knots that can flow either way.  At one point we had only five meters (16 feet) of water under our keel.  Mr. Chai showed us some charts illustrating the passage. 

We were supposed to have commentary during the passage but I didn’t hear it.  Suzi and I were on the front deck and the wind took my breath away, literally, such that I had to go inside.  My Google AI explained it this way.

“High wind makes breathing difficult primarily by creating a low-pressure zone near the nose and mouth, disrupting the body’s ability to use negative pressure to draw air into the lungs. This creates a sensation of fighting for air, often resulting in labored breathing, rapid fatigue, coughing, and chest discomfort, especially in those with preexisting respiratory conditions.”

I have a pre-existing respiratory condition; my right diaphragm is partially paralyzed making my right lung not function well.  The negative pressure effect is called Bernoulli’s Principle which states that as the speed of air increases, its pressure decreases.  I am learning my new limits.

But I was out long enough that I should have heard the commentary on deck so I called Guest Services who assured me that the captain gave commentary and asked me if I was really on an outside deck at 1 PM.  I could assure her I was.  I posted on Facebook to ask fellow cruisers if they heard the announcement.  Negative.  I called Guest Services back and asked them to check their PA system.  They assured me, again, that the commentary had been available on outside decks.  The next day Guest Services called me back and sheepishly said that there had been no commentary from the bridge for “operational reasons.”  From the breathtaking wind, the currents (not close to eight knots when we transited but still…) and the lack of water under the keel I could understand.

It was a relaxing four days.  Suzi and I skipped the formal dinners and parties like Kentucky Derby Day with fancy hats and betting on horses moved forward with the throw of the dice, a classic trans-oceanic activity from the days of liners.  I loved these events as a kid crossing with my grandpa, but on this voyage enjoyable conversation, dominoes with friends, walking laps around the promenade deck, reading a history of Australia, or writing this blog was more interesting to me.

Three of the things we did enjoy were music, a sand painting artist, John Thiering, and lectures.  I’ll deal with music in a post in a few weeks.  The sand painting gave us an interesting contrast with the sand painting we saw in Vanuatu.   

As for the lectures, Chris Croxson is giving lectures on the natural history of the regions we’re sailing through…

… while John and Morag Hocknull finished a serries lectures on Papua New Guinea (PNG).  John’s and Morag’s stories make Suzi and me look like we’ve led boring lives.  John was a Regional Patrol Officer, a Kiap, in the 70s at the end of Australian rule in PNG. (Kiap is shorthand for Captain, a hold over from when the Germans ruled Northern Papua.)   Kiaps were police officers, magistrates, and administrators: the face of government, sometimes called “traveling sovereigns.”  They went on weeks long patrols, often on foot, through remote areas.  They laid much of the groundwork for the future PNG government, including conducting the census and running elections. 

His final lecture Customs, Cults and Cannibalism, gave me the lede for this post.  In it he talked about the cargo cults.  He knew Yali Singina, who had been a police officer.  During the war he was a coast watcher for the Australians.  While in Australia for training Yali was shown some of the West’s industrial output and was promised that if PNG helped the allies against the Japanese, they could have some of this cargo for themselves.  This was part of the basis for the cargo cult he fostered after the war.

But it was the end of the lecture that gave me the idea for the lede, his encounter with cannibalism.  As patrol officer he got a complaint from a missionary about three men who had engaged in cannibalism.  He hiked for three days to their village where they told him what happened.  A local shaman was dying and his last request was that three men take a small part of his body, about a square inch, and eat it after he had died.  That way his spiritual power would be transferred to them and sacred local traditions could continue.  John, as both police officer and magistrate had to do something, but what?  PNG was operating under Queensland, Australia’s laws.  There was still a law forbidding the practice of witchcraft on the books.  He tried them on witchcraft rather than cannibalism, found them guilty, gave them a nominal fine and released them.

After PNG gained independence John and Morag went back to Australia.  One Sunday John opened the local paper and found a lurid story about cannibalism in PNG.  This missionary would not let go and persuaded the new authorities to bring the three men up on the more serious charge of cannibalism.  They were convicted and given 18 months in jail. 

But the story doesn’t end here, John told us that the missionary decided the next Easter was the time to introduce the villagers to the Eucharist. He handed bread to the congregants saying, “the body of Christ.”   John ended with a slide of bread and wine and let our imaginations take it from there.