Bundaberg -9th June
Astra
Jeremy & Sally Paul
Fri 12 Jun 2009 18:49
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We arrived in Bundaberg Tuesday 9th June, after 8
days at sea on the trip from New Zealand.
We were both a bit tired, after 8 days/nights of
contiuous 3hours on/ 3 Hour off watches.
Still we were exhilarated, relieved and a little
proud that we had made such a long passage with just the two of us.
We were assigned a berth in the marina by the very
helpful marina staff, then we were not allowed to leave Astra till we had
cleared customs/ immigration.
Three officers duly arrived from the Town (20km
away) and were very efficient in dealing with all the paperwork required to
clear us and Astra into Australia, as well as relieving us of a substantial
quantity of our fresh/frozen provisions that were not allowed into
Australia.
Then as midday approached the first item
on our list of jobs was to find the marina bar/restaurant and celebrate our
arrival in Australia with some Aussie beer!! Well now came the complications, we
were asked if we wanted the beer in a pot or a schooner? anyway once we
persuaded the barman that we had no idea what he was talking about, he showed us
and we decided schooners were the way to go.
Suitably refreshed we returned to Astra, and
realised that we were berthed next to Queequeg who we had last seen in the San
Blas islands, Panama! Long chat with John and he is headed roughly the same way
as us via Malaysia, Suez and the Med so we will probably see him along the
way.
Over the next couple of days we worked on the usual
list of things that needed fixing, explored Bundaberg, and Sally did the
provisioning shop at Woolworths (great supermarket and apparently nothing to do
with the UK Woolworths)
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