Moving into 2023

 Tomorrow we start our long haul journey to South America - Melbourne-Auckland-Santiago-Buenos Aires. Exhausting but we arrived with our luggage! In a few days time we fly to Ushuaia in order to embark on an expedition which will take us to the Antarctic Peninsula then on to South Georgia via the South Shetlands and South Sandwich Islands and finally to the Falkland-Malvinas Islands only to end up back in Ushuaia.  I will be reporting on that voyage on a new blog  hwheat2023.blogspot.com 

What came next?

Once we’d unpacked and caught up on a little sleep, the next three months flew by filled with some absolutely delightful catch ups with family and friends, our weekly volunteering at Foodbank packing food hampers and also helping out at a local nursery that grows and sells indigenous plants, and, as always, we had to tend to the essential body maintenance stuff – medical, dental, optical, vaccinations, etc. There were also travel plans for 2023 to finalise as well as VISAs to be arranged for our March-April visit to South America. In between those bits and pieces, I made many attempts at sorting my photos and writing up our Arctic travels - not very successfully I might add - other things got in the way. 

One special thing that took us winging a little way northwest was a reunion of the Cochran Clan.  We Gibsons (my father’s side of the family) are descendants of John and Elizabeth Cochran who arrived in Hobsons Bay on the Wanata on 17 September 1852. John Cochran was a master weaver from the famous Paisley district but came out to Australia as a shepherd. The family established themselves in the Beaufort area and there have been Cochrans in the region ever since.  Descendants of John and Elizabeth, members of the old Highland Scottish Buchanan clan also, who gathered for that happy weekend in Beaufort came from Tassie, Qld, Victoria and NSW. It was a marvelous weekend spent catching up with cousins not seen for many decades and meeting others for the first time.  It was an extremely nostalgic time topped off by a piper who entertained us for over an hour with many requests for the Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond where the Buchanan clan hail from. Family – we’re a crazy jumble but being able to draw the strings together reaching back to two of our ancestors was pretty special.

And talking of family, we spent an exhausting but very satisfying day helping number one son plant 700 grape vines on his property in Heathcote. Next month he is installing his distillery at Envy Rise. From city slicker to ‘Farmer Brown’ - it has been a happy transition for him and Vanessa.

Our gorgeous great grandchildren

Because we would be away for Christmas, we held our family Christmas gathering in early December and that was a happy, noisy, sprawling affair – just wonderful.  It's a bit of a miracle managing to get our higglety pigglety family together in the one spot - only a few couldn't make it. 

\What’s that got to do with travel you might ask? Well perhaps not a lot other than it is all part of our journey through life. I promise you more ‘proper’ travel in my next blog. Stay tuned for a bit more excitement as we travel to Antarctica. Read about that at hwheat2023.blogspot.com 

September 2 Home again!

 And that brought us to the end of that journey into the Arctic and beyond. The trip home was grueling but uneventful – Toronto to Los Angeles to Melbourne. Way too long in the air but such is the price we pay for living in the land down-under.  Jet lag dogged me for weeks perhaps intensified by our brush with COVID. But we were on a trajectory towards our next escapades very soon the first of which is to be 2 months in the Antarctic. Stay tuned…… 

August 26 - 29 Toronto

 We hadn’t warmed to Toronto last time we visited but this time we really enjoyed what we saw of it.  Friends who are familiar with the city and who were also saying for a few days, took us to some of their favourite places the day after we arrived.  A fascinating day which started with a private showing of exquisite Inuit and Native American art. Stand outs were works by Brian Jurgen who's art works are often social statements.

'Walk this way' by Brian Jurgen. This was made from sneakers 

Sculptures in stone with ivory and wood insets 

We spent quite a bit of time at this gallery in the Toronto Dominion Centre, the only other person there was the guard. It was wonderful being able to look at leisure. From this we went to stroll along the shores of Lake Ontario via the Royal York hotel for a swanky lunch. 

The Royal York

The welcoming committee at Chelsea hotel

The next day we decided to simply wander. We headed for the university area through Queen’s Park to the National History Museum.  What a fascinating place and all the while we were strolling through the various exhibits the Campus Orchestra was playing in the large central atrium. 

Cute sign.

There were many interesting exhibits and quite diverse. From ancient China to the COVID pandemic to Inuit artefacts. For example a birds foot bag which was used to store and carry chopped moss for lamp wicks or cottongrass fluff for fire tinder.

Bird foot bag

Two exhibits from the face mask display.

We then just wandered through the university neighbourhood stopping for a drink and bite to eat at a dinner cum sports bar which was terrific. We were aiming for the Art Museum of Ontario to have a closer look at the Brian Jurgen’s bronze  ‘Couch Monster’ made from discarded lounge furniture. 

Lunch is a corner diner

Interesting reflections.

Student housing

Brian Jurgen’s Couch Monster

August 25 Kangerlussuaq

 This day, the last day of our expedition, was packed with interesting things. We started in Kangerlussuaq where the international airport is situated but which until recently was a former US base. And yes we were out to see one last glacier before we headed for Canada - Reindeer Glacier, which reaches a height of 60m in some places.

That pale speck across the lake is where Crown Princess Mary is staying

One of our tundra buses

First stop – oh and yes we were on the longest road in Greenland. From the port to the airport and then on into the interior reaching close to Greenland's ‘ice sheet’ which covers 80% of the surface of the country – about 50km I believe.  But before heading to the glacier we were treated to a BBQ lunch at the lakeside Roklubben restaurant. Just across the lake from us Crown Princess of Denmark, Mary was in residence.

Feeling quite sated, we piled into Tundra trucks and headed through the hills and across tundra always on the lookout for reindeer and musk oxen. We saw a few musk ox way off in the distance but no reindeers. 

Glacial melt

Remnants from a plane crash

Once we reached the glacier we walked parallel to its edge – it’s mighty big!

But all too soon we had to return to Kangerlussuaq airport to board our charter flight to Canada. The plane flew us to Hamilton which is about 90km from Toronto with a refuel stop at Iqaluit, Baffin Island along the way. The next morning after what seemed like only a few hours sleep, we were taxied into Toronto. 

The end of an interesting expedition. Below is the route we took .

August 24 Evighedsfjorden

 Today we visited Evighedsfjorden, or Eternity Fjord. This glacial complex is rather spectacular because of its forested landscape – trees are not a common feature of Greenland.  Some people went out to explore but we stayed tucked up in the Observation lounge with a bottle of bubbles catching up friends. [It was also the second last day of the voyage so there was a bit of ‘housekeeping’ to do and accounts to settle etc.]

Our expedition team

August 23 Ilulissat and Sermeq Kujalleq

 

We woke to a silent glistening welcome, a field of mammoth icebergs; we’d arrived at Ilulissat, on the west coast of Greenland, known as the ‘birthplace of icebergs’ - Sermeq Kujallek. This huge river of ice is also known as Jakobshavn Glacier. It is the most productive glacier, not only in Greenland, but in the Northern Hemisphere. It pushes out 20 million tonnes of ice each day which all then floats and grinds into the Ilulissat Icefjord and to Disko Bay; they say that it was one of these icebergs that the Titanic hit.  

After breakfast we donned wet weather gear (it was raining and chilly) and lined up to climb aboard a zodiac to take us ashore. Once off-loaded at the gorgeous wee port, a bus ferried us through the quaint busy little town of Ilulissat to the beginning of a boardwalk which leads you through marshy tundra and lichen covered boulders to the UNESCO World Heritage Icefjord to gawk at an immense corridor of icebergs (48km long). The fjord was completely choked with huge bergs, the majority of which were much bigger than our ship.  

We hiked about 1.5km along the boardwalk to get a better/closer view. 

Once the icebergs make it out of the fjord, they are carried by currents north along the west coast of Greenland only to then be swept southwards along the coasts of Baffin Island and Newfoundland. Magnificent ice monsters too huge to describe.