Brisbane, Australia, Jan 22, 2002 Barrier Reef Is The Largest

By Bob Van Leer
(BRISBANE, Australia, Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2002) - The past couple of days we were exploring the Great Barrier Reef.

This is an immense reef system that extends for 1250 miles from south of Brisbane paralleling the coast north to Papau New Guinea. It is five to 45 miles across and contains about 750 small tropical islands.
  The reef is not continuous, as there are passages through it. It is claimed to be the largest structure built by living things. Uncounted millions of coral polyps live and die and their cast-off debris forms the basis of the reef. The system supports over 1500 species of tropical fish and a myriad of plants and animals including anemones, shellfish, turtles and morays.
  Our ship, the Crown Odyssey, anchored in Cid harbor, at one time used as a staging area to assemble the fleet for the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942, one of the early turning points in the Pacific war.
  We were scheduled Jan. 19 to visit Hardy Reef which a guidebook describes as, ". . . world's most extraordinary snorkeling". But the morning we were to go there we encountered the worst sea weather of the trip so far and the captain reluctantly cancelled.
  This was disappointing as I had looked forward to snorkeling on the reef. I even bought a new face mask with my current glasses prescription built in. The diving "platform" at Hardy Reef, according to photographs we saw, is a lot more than a platform. It is several hundred feet long, three stories (including an underwater viewing area), a semi-submersible for those who want to view and not dive, as well as other structures.
  As a consolation we were taken on a tour of the Whitsunday Islands, of which the reef is a part. We went into one narrow inlet with sheer rock walls covered with native art. Some of the art read, "Bimbini-'85, Brisbane '69, Binderella '75" and other equally ancient paintings of boat names and the dates of their visits.
  We left the reef and headed for Brisbane. This is Australia's third largest city with a population of about 1.5 million and is the capital of Queensland province. Betty and I were here once before in 1988 for World Expo, which several persons here said was a turning point in the history of the city, changing it from a largely rural settlement to a modern city.
  We drove through the 100 acre Expo site and it has now been turned into a mixed-use area called "South Bank" composed of a lot of parks, public buildings and some private development.
  One thing we have noticed is that beer is more important in Australia than most places. For starters, there is a national song of lament, "The Pub With No Beer". One lecturer commented that people in the U. S. think Foster's is the Australian favorite beer. He said most Foster's is exported because we don't like it. He said Victoria Bitter (VB) is the favorite, but someone else said VB stands for Very Bad beer. The popular beer in Brisbane is "XXXX" called 4X. One story of how that name came about is that no one knew how to spell beer.
  After leaving Brisbane we will be at sea a day before arriving at Sydney, largest city in Australia.
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