This was published 1 year ago
Viking Orion, Bali to Sydney: An extravagant way to arrive home
Viking Orion in White Bay, Sydney Harbour.
My mates are mystified when I tell them I'm cruising from Bali to Sydney. Why would you? Well, avoiding jetlag for one: even a three-hour time difference can be discombolutating. Avoiding the recent awfulness of airports. Not having to cram into an airline seat and eat a dismal bun. Wouldn't you rather be stretched by a swimming pool, or tucking into capellini with zucchini-wrapped prawns in an Italian restaurant from whose walls a black-and-white Sophia Loren gazes?
Later, I realise these arguments are trivial. It's when I'm on Viking Orion's sailing away from Rinca island in Indonesia that I know why I'm cruising back to Sydney – or cruising anywhere.
I've sauntered among giant lizards and then, melting and tired, am sucked back into air-conditioning, a gushing shower and a bar that delivers me a cold German beer. Now in late afternoon, the Timor Sea is a panorama of huge billowing clouds and the shadowy drift of rain cells. The air is balmy, the sea flat as a steel. Islands scroll past, camel-humped with volcanoes.
Viking Orion is suave and sophisticated, with uncrowded public areas and stylish Scandinavian décor.Credit: Eric Laignel
How else would I ever get here? Cruising is exhilarating. I've sailed out of a remote and beautiful place as the sun slumps in an orange sky. Australia is over the horizon. Everyone is heading for dinner and I'm the only one on . It's just me, clouds that drift like galleons, and a tiny wooden fishing boat, fragile as a husk, that makes me marvel at the fortitude of fishermen.
I've never arrived in Australia like this before. I'm always hurtling in a metal tube at 10,000 metres, cramped and bored. This is a sedate and extravagant way to come home. Viking Orion, near-identical to Viking's other ocean ships, is suave and sophisticated, with uncrowded public areas, stylish no-fuss Scandinavian décor, a spa, multiple restaurants and with an infinity pool cantilevered off its stern.
The ship is a floating dot of civilisation in this great big corner of the planet. There's no better way to get a feel for Australia's remoteness and immensity. Most of the time I think of Darwin as somewhere up north. Now it's down south: a gateway to Australia, even though utterly cut off from all the rest of it.
Wouldn't you rather be stretched by a swimming pool, or tucking into snacks on the deck, than cramming into an airline seat?Credit: Viking
My first sight of our continent is a brown smudge clawed with mangroves. The high-rises of central Darwin seem ludicrously out of place, and dwarfed between endless ocean and endless red earth. It looks like a city on a strange science-fiction planet. This sail-in is another reason to cruise: great travel should shift your perspectives.
The untrimmed concrete quay that serves as Darwin's cruise terminal is hardly reassuring. Humidity is a smack in the face. Some overseas passengers look dazed at this first encounter with the wonderful, breezy, beautiful Australia they've imagined. But reassurance isn't far off. Along the waterfront kids splash in a swimming pool, people cluck in bars, and frangipani trees are pretty in pink.
On a cruise ship, you approach places from a different angle – which can be taken literally. I love seeing port towns the way most travellers have seen them since the dawn of history, not approached through dismal airport suburbs but from the ocean. And I love seeing the ocean, even when there's nothing on it. This watery landscape covers most of Earth and yet is seldom admired by travellers except as a sparkle below an aircraft's wings, or tame slump on a same-old beach.Next day, Viking Orion sails into the Torres Strait Islands. Depending on your point of view, this is another place Australia begins or ends. Or where the Indonesia archipelago ends, or Melanesia begins. But anyway, what traveller doesn't enjoy those indeterminate, intermediate places of cultural fusion that create something unique you can't see anywhere else?
Our destination, Thursday Island, is nested in other islands of slumped green hills and cuticles of sand. I spot a few white blobs of buildings and a hedgehog bristle of hilltop antenna. The ship inches into a sumptuous bay and, as it pirouettes to anchor, a turtle surfaces for a startled look. Grey clouds rumble across the sulky sky.
The moody middle-of-nowhere atmosphere is exhilarating. I've heard a lot about the Torres Strait Islands but I've never been here. Only on a cruise ship can I arrive somewhere new and remote without the least trouble – in fact, while I'm eating smorrebrod by the panoramic windows of Mamsen's lounge: beef on rye bread, pink see-through slivers of radish, tartare sauce and an inspired sprinkling of crispy fried onion.
Another thing about cruising. True, for all I know Thursday Island might merit a week of indolent exploration and enjoyment. So might some of the other ports we visit as we skip down the Queensland coast to Cairns and Townsville and Airlie Beach. But sometimes a day is just enough. Have a stickybeak, soak up the flavour, enjoy the day, then move right along. Happy travels are sometimes simple.
Imagine the hassle of doing this independently. How does anyone get from Thursday Island to Cairns? I don't know and don't need to. I just slide down Cape York while I'm eating my lamb chops and berry crumble in the World Café, then listening to a lady in a white dress play Chopin, then sleeping in my comfy cabin.
Next morning, I breakfast on waffles. The Coral Sea is a stippled with silver and occasionally erupts in alarming sandbanks. The coast is surprisingly close, a voluptuous beauty of undulations and curves, occasionally nipped and tucked with white beaches. Australia's incredible immensity is on show again as Cape York shuffles by.
Cruising gives me time to think. No other mode of transport does this, except long train journeys. Unencumbered with the practicalities of travel, I can let my thought roam. I consider the utter aloneness of the indigenous people who lived here for tens of thousands of years: was this a suffocating remoteness that hampered new ideas, or a reassuring continuity of perpetual self-containment? What must it have been like when the first ship creaked over the horizon?
Then flying fish skip over the water and disturb my train of thought. As I squint at Cape York, Australia's untapped potential shimmers. This vast region could be another whole Malaysia. Or we could just leave it in peace, with its rainforest and mangroves, crocodiles and tree kangaroos.And then Cairns arrives: how easy was that? I'm only half way to Sydney and my mates must still be wondering why I'm here at all. But I have no time to explain. I'm off for an shore-side adventure, and then I'm getting back on Viking Orion for scones and chitchat in the Wintergarden. Because why wouldn't I?
Brian Johnston travelled as a guest of Viking Cruises.
THE DETAILS
CRUISE
Viking Orion sails Asia, the Pacific and Alaska in 2023, while its near-identical sister ships offer itineraries worldwide. The writer sailed on Viking's 17-day "Komodo & the Australian Coast" cruise between Bali and Sydney. The next departures are on November 19, 2023 and (in the reverse direction) February 27, 2024. Prices from $9495 a person twin share. Phone 138 747, see vikingcruises.com.au
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