We finally managed to have an intelligible conversation via Skype (the company;s slogan: “Everybody in the world can talk!” Yup, as long as it's one at a time) with my mom and dad. Following that, we scraped off our stinky hotel miasma and boarded our boat. The kids were insanely happy: Free food! Trash TV! Pools! Ping Pong! Our own room!! For those teachers reading this blog, I do want you to know that Adam is proceeding apace with his American Political Systems homework, Laura has conquered the matter unit in science and begun her geometry, and we're all learning French 3, since Jeff accidentally left home without his French CDs.

We left the kids to their glee and, having successfully smuggled the scotch aboard, Jeff and I got off the boat to find a liquor store and test the smuggling limits. So far we haven't found it - we reboarded with three bottles of wine. Our travel agent sent a nice gift: 2 vouchers for valpolicella, one for each adult. When we tried to redeem both that night, they looked askance, because what we thought was 2 glasses was actually 2 bottles. We saved the second voucher.

Sydney Harbor was a spectacular port to sail away from, even though we left at night. The pilot boat followed right alongside, ready to whisk away the highly remunerated pilot as soon as he'd safely steered us through the right lane (yes, it's very well paying - $175,000 AD - but the hours are hell: our Melbourne pilot boarded at 4:30 this a.m. about 2 miles out to sea to guide us into Melbourne port, and he had get up, fire up the boat, and motor out to meet us before that). Prior to Melbourne, we spent a day at sea eyeing our fellow passengers. They're mostly older and very few children are aboard. Since the weather is warm, sizeable lounging bodies surround the outdoor pool and most of never seem to test the pool temperature. Jeff says the scene reminds him of the Axiom, the spaceship in Wall-E. Three of us swam in NoseBreak Pool - the indoor pool in which Adam broke his nose on our previous voyage. It was sloshy in an exciting way, like a very small wave pool at a water park, but we were very careful.

Melbourne is a nice little city a tad smaller than Sydney but not quite so picturesque. It has cooled down quite a bit since the deadliest wildfires in the state of Victoria, but they are still fighting them: the situation is forecast to get much worse again over the next several days as the heat returns and the wind picks up. We talked to a local who told us that in one burnt area, the only house that survived was one in which the homeowner had burned his own bushland several years ago as a precaution. The judicial system hauled that fellow into court right after he lit up and fined him $100,000 AD plus court costs for his apparent folly, though a groundswell of support has begun recently to overturn his fine. In visiting some areas of the botanical gardens that are planted like the land that burned, you can see how much very dry tinder builds up in a relatively short time - old leaves, dead branches.

We visited the Melbourne Zoo today - another extremely dry place, since Victoria is suffering record droughts. Getting there was a challenge that involved riding the city's extensive tram system. We viewed many of Australia's peculiar creatures: the platypus, kangaroo, wombat, koala (BTW, Laura thought that one of our upcoming stops was Koala Lumpur). The platypus swam around its darkened enclosure madly. We learned that its eggs are an average of 17 millimeters long - I had this image in my head that they were as big as duck eggs. The koala, perpetually drunk on eucalyptus, was sleeping it off the continual hangover - the only body part we could see was his motionless haunch. The wombat was in his underground lair, on his back with all four feet in the air. He appeared bloated and dead. One of the younger zoo visitors noted that “he has poop halfway out his bum!!” That must be one very fat, somnolent, secure wombat. We viewed our first kangaroos, who were also living the good life. They snoozed under their very own thoughtfully rigged canvas canopy. When one got up, we noted that kangaroos have two speeds only: plodding and watch-out-coming-through. When moving about at a leisurely pace, they are so deliberate that they look like an arthritic arising gingerly from bed. When hopping, they become hyperefficient machines with no off button. We've also noted that they like to look in the same direction at the same time, so calling a bunch of them a “mob” fits.