Nearly every city has a high building, a tower, or a large Ferris wheel.
London had the London eye Paris has the Eiffel tower The Galata in Istanbul The CN Tower in Toronto The towers of San Gimignano Pisa has a leaning tower
We’ve managed to see all of the above bar the Galata in Istanbul. One day we might get there.
But, on this side of the world, there are two, the Sydney Tower, and the Sky Tower in Auckland, which we just visited recently.
It’s not a tall tower, but it definitely gives great vies of Auckland, particularly to the north
The mountain in the background at the top of the photo is of a volcano on Rangitoto Island. When we were visiting, there were reports that it might become active again.
To give a height perspective, it didn’t seem all that far down to the apartment building and gardens nearby.
Like everyone who was in that artificially silent environment that was the flight deck of a shuttle, unexpected sounds caused unexpected results.
The Engineer cursed.
The Pilot, Myrtle, hesitated for a moment, as if not quite sure what to do, highlighting the fact she had not been in such a situation before, but quickly recovered, and brought up the incoming object on screen.
Note to self: amend the training program to allow for random objects to come out of nowhere.
We all looked at the object. Myrtle should have been taking us into the freighter, but had got overawed by the not easily identifiable ship approaching.
“Our ship will take care of the problem,” I said. “Take us into the freighter.”
AS if surprised that she should be asked to do so, she realised it was not her job to be staring at the screen, and muttered, “Oh, yes,” before resuming our passage.
Another note to self: Proper command structures and language should be used at all times.
A minute or so later we were in the cargo bay and the cargo doors were closing. Once closed and the atmosphere adjusted, the deck would become a hive of activity.
There was still a static picture of the craft on the screen, and it was one I’d seen before, an old vessel that dated back over a hundred years. I’d seen it in a space museum on the moon.
I was tempted to ask the Captain what was happening, but knew that to interrupt would not be worth the reprimand.
The engineer had seen one before too. “You don’t see those craft very often, if at all. Or this far out in space. They only had a limited trave distance, didn’t they?”
“Unless someone had been tinkering.” Several had been built as exploration ships, but the majority were freighters, used to build the outer colonies on the nearest planets.
A new drive would enable it to travel to the outer rim of our galaxy, but not much further if there were no readily available fuel supplies. Those that were available were tightly regulated by space command.
Cargo doors closed, deck pressurised, suddenly the whole deck was alive with people and machinery, our people meeting with the freighter crew and arranging for the cargo for Venus to be loaded. Myrtle was to stay with the shuttle, monitoring the loading.
I went down the ramp and was greeted by the first officer of the freighter, a chap I’d once served with, Jacko Miles. Jacko loved being in space, but no longer interested in the machinations of Space Command. The simple life of a freighter first officer was all he desired.
Except his face, right now, had the visual lines of worry.
“What happened?” We were past the usual introductions, and general bonhomie.
“Stopped, boarded, and a crate removed.”
“What was in the crate?”
“No one is saying, but whatever it was, it must have been important to attack us for it.”
My private communicator vibrated in my pocket. The captain was calling, and didn’t want anyone else listening in.
“Just give me a moment,” I said taking the communicator out of my pocket and answering the call. “Yes sir?”
“We have a problem.”
And in that moment, I had to agree with him. Jacko now had his hands in the air, and behind him were two people with hand held weapons trained on him, and me.
We were staying at the Hilton and advised there would be a large cruise liner berthing next to the hotel. There was the Arcadia.
This is the view from the other side of the hotel. Where our room was, we could almost walk onto the aft end of the ship.
We were also told this was a rather extraordinary day because there were two cruise ships in the port. particularly because it was near the end of the cruising season.
The other ship was two berths along, the Sun Princess.
Not as big as the Arcadia, up close it was still very impressive.
Captains invariably hated the word ‘problem’. I did too, because it conjured up so many different scenarios, each more scarier than the last, and maginified exponentially because we were in space.
We took a closer look, and it was the sort of damage if it was back on Earth, one would associate with weapons fire, lasers to be exact.
Yes, in the 24th century we had ray guns, hand held, and ship bound.
The only problem was, only the cruise class vessels, like the one I was now on, were allowed to have them, and using them, well, the paperwork alone could keep a complement of 20 working day and night for a month.
Test them, yes, less paper work, use them, no. There had never been a reason to.
But someone had, and on a freighter, which only meant one possibility, that whatever the freighter had been carrying, had been worth violating a thousand regulations and rules.
And bring their ship and selves out into the light.
It was, of course, Space Command’s worst nightmare realised, that the ideal of space exploration as a united effort by everyone, had a member who had decided against unity.
Unless, of course, the improbably had happened, there was life outside our solar system, and we were dealing with a new planet, or people.
Except I would not expect them to use something as conventional as a laser.
Myrtle had put us very close to the damaged area and taken a number of photographs, and the engineer had analysed the damaged area.
Then, cleared to enter the freighter, she took us up to the cargo doors and waited as we watched them open.
It was the same time the engineer’s hand held computer started beeping.
And a warning light on the console in front of Myrtle started flashing, accompanied by a warning klaxon.
Another vessel had just entered our proximity zone.
The Harbour Grand Hotel, Kowloon, Hong Kong, is a modern, but luxurious hotel, one that our travel agent found for us.
I was initially worried that it might be too far away from central Hong Kong, but a free shuttle bus that runs at convenient times took us to and from the hotel to the Star Ferry terminal.
The luxuriousness of the hotel starts the moment you walk in the front entrance with a magnificent staircase that I assumed led up to the convention center (or perhaps where weddings are catered for) and a staircase where one could make a grand entrance or exit. Oh, and there’s a chandelier too.
We booked into a Harbourview suite, and it was not only spacious but had that air of luxury about it that made it an experience every time you walked into it.
But the view of Hong Kong Harbour, that was the ‘piece de resistance’
I spent a lot of time staring out that window, and it was more interesting than watching the television, which we didn’t do much of. Most of the time, when we travel, TV is limited to International English speaking news channels.
This time we had several movies included with the room, but I still preferred to watch the endless water traffic on the harbor.
The lounge area had several comfortable chairs, an area for the bar fridge and tea or coffee making facilities and on the opposite side the usual table and chairs for those who came to conduct business
The bedroom was separate to the entrance and lounge. Notable was the fact the room had two bathrooms, one in the bedroom, and one out in the lounge, perhaps for the guests who were having friends in.
We dined in one of the restaurants, Hoi Yat Heen, where we experienced Guandong cuisine. I tried the roasted goose for the first time, and it was interesting to say the least.
There’s no doubt where we will be staying the next time we go to Hong Kong.
We have visited this town on a hill, famous for its fourteen towers, twice. The first time we stayed in a hotel overlooking the main piazza, and the second time, for a day visit, and return to a little restaurant tucked away off the main piazza for its home cooking.
No cars are allowed inside the town and parking is provided outside the town walls. You can drive up to the hotel to deliver your baggage, but the car must return to the carpark overnight.
This is one of the fourteen towers
I didn’t attempt to climb to the tower, which you can do in some of them, just getting up the church steps was enough for me. Inside the building was, if I remember correctly, a museum.
Looking up the piazza towards some battlements, and when you reach the top and turn left, there is a small restaurant on the right-hand side of the laneway that had the best wild boar pasta.
Another of the fourteen towers, and through the arch, down a lane to the gated fence that surrounds the town. The fortifications are quite formidable and there are several places along the fence where you can stand and look down the hill at the oncoming enemy (if there was one).
Part of the main piazza which is quite large, and on the right, the wishing well where my wish for a cooler day was not granted.
Officially, the Piazza della Cisterna is the most beautiful square of the town, San Gimignano. The well was built in 1273 and enlarged in 1346 by Podestà Guccio dei Malavolti.
And not to be outdone by any other the other old towns, there is an old church, one of several. It is the Collegiate Church or the Duomo di San Gimignano, a monument of Romanesque architecture built around 1000 and enlarged over time.
Next door is the Museum of Sacred Art.
And I guess it’s rather odd to see television aerials on top of houses that are quite literally about a thousand years old. I wonder what they did back then for entertainment?
I don’t think anyone in the whole world could miss what happened in Washington on the 6th January.
I watched in horror.
But, why would it matter to anyone who is not American?
12 years ago, in January before Obama’s inauguration, we were visiting a very different Washington. It was a cold but sunny winter’s day, and at the time there were very few people about.
We had come down from Baltimore by train to visit the sights, and monuments, which included the Capitol.
I remember going into the building, and through the rooms that we saw being invaded, and was struck by a sense of awe in that these were the hallowed halls of democracy.
We have all been taught that democracy and the United States go hand in hand, and that it is enshrined in these buildings and in their constitution. I saw and read a copy of this constitution, even bought a copy of it to read in more detail later. Even I could understand what it meant, not only for America, but for the rest of the world.
I wonder if any of those people who invaded the Capitol had taken the time to understand just what their constitution stood for or how sacred their monuments to democracy are.
I have a passion for visiting transport museums, to see old trains, planes, buses, cars, even ships if it’s possible.
This has led to taking a number of voyages on the TSS Earnslaw in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Many, many, many years ago on Puffing Billy, a steam train in the Dandenongs, Victoria, Australia.
The steam train in Kingston, New Zealand, before it was closed down, but hopefully it will reopen sometime in the future.
The London Transport Museum in London England, which had a lot of buses.
The Workshops Railway Museum in Ipswich, Queensland, where once the many steam engines were built and maintained, and now had only a handful of engines remaining.
However, in the quest for finding and experiencing old transportation methods, we came across the Mary Valley Rattler, which runs out of Gympie, Queensland, Australia.
The ride begins in Gympie at the old Gympie Railway station, and as can be seen below, is one of the relics of the past, and, nothing like the new more modern stations. Thankfully.
If you’re going to have a vintage train, then you have to have a vintage station.
The Class of engine, seen below, is the C17, a superheated upgrade to the C16 it was based on, and first run in 1903. This particular engine was built in 1951, although the first of its type was seen in 1920 and the last of 227 made in 1953. It was the most popular of the steam engines used by Queensland Railways.
The C designation meant it had four driving axels and 17 was the diameter of the cylinder, 17 inches. It is also known as a 4-8-0 steam locomotive and nicknamed one of the “Brown Bombers” because of its livery, brown with green and red trimming.
Also, this engine was built in Maryborough, not far from Gympie by Walkers Limited, one of 138.
This photo was taken as the train returned from Amamoor, a trip that takes up to an hour.
The locomotive is detached from the carriages, then driven to the huge turntable to turn around for the return journey to Amamoor.
This is the locomotive heading down to the water station, and then taking on water. After that, it will switch lines, and reverse back to reconnect the carriages for the trip to Amamoor.
The carriages are completely restored and are extremely comfortable. It brings back, for me, many memories of riding in older trains in Melbourne when I was a child.
The trains, then, were called Red Rattlers.
This is the locomotive climbing one of the hilly parts of the line before crossing over the Mary River on a trestle bridge.
This is the engine at Amamoor near the picnic area where young children and excited parents and grandparents can get on the locomotive itself and look inside where the driver sits.
And, no, I didn’t volunteer to shovel coal.
This particular locomotive spent most of its working life between Townsville and Mount Isa and was based in Cloncurry, Charters Towers, and Townsville, before being sent, at the end of its useful days in the late 1960s, to the Ipswich Railway Workshops.
Hohensalzburg Castle sits atop the Festungsberg, accessed by a cable car.
The castle itself dominates the Salzburg skyline.
Below is a view down into Salzburg from the castle walls.
We had lunch at a café, the Salzburg Fortress Café, that overlooked the countryside. This was where we were introduced to Mozart Gold Chocolate Cream added to our coffee.
The square below featured in the Sound of Music.
Among the more interesting objects to be seen, the gun below shows what some of the castle’s armaments might have been. These cannons, in the ‘Firing Gallery’ date back to the thirty years war in the early 1600’s.
