February 20 - Eden, Australia

We had a nice short stop in this pretty little town today.  Eden is about 300 miles south of Sydney in the state of New South Wales.  Following the arrival of Europeans it became a whaling port.  An interesting relationship developed between whalers and orca whales.  The indigenous people wouldn’t kill orcas because of some of their local beliefs.  So the whalers began using orcas to help them catch humpbacks.  The orcas would trap the humpbacks in the bay so that they could be harpooned.  In return the whalers rewarded the orcas with prize pieces of the humpback carcasses.

Following the demise of the whaling industry Eden became a port for shipment of cattle and sheep.  When the gold rush occurred in the 1850’s Eden saw many prospectors arrive on their way to the gold fields.  As that era ended and whaling disappeared Eden became a quiet little town again.  Today the population is about 3500.

I took the shuttle bus into town and walked around for a couple of hours.  There weren’t too many shops but several of them did sell local arts and crafts.  There were quite a few pubs and some looked like they had very nice fish and chips but I wasn’t hungry.  (How could I be with all the food available on the ship?).  I’ve been wanting to get one of those floaty kind of dresses that I see lots of women on the ship wear even though they aren’t teeny tiny Twiggies.  I figured if they could wear these things that look so comfortable why can’t I.  Well, I found one and now I just have to screw up my courage to try wearing it.  Some of the places we’ll be going to soon will be very hot and humid and the idea of a light billowy dress seems very appealing.

Back on the ship we had one last trivia round in the late afternoon (we didn’t win) and I said my good-byes to my many new friends.  Hopefully we’ll stay in touch and our paths will cross again.  There is actually something a little magical about the friendships one can form on a ship.  Tomorrow we’ll be in Sydney and the grand voyage will begin.