P&O’s Pacific Explorer the first cruise ship to sail in Australia
The first international cruise ship to set sail from Sydney has completed its first voyage. What was it like?
The cruise terminal is packed to the gunwales and humming with anticipation as 2000 eager holidaymakers prepare to board the first cruise liner departing Sydney Harbour since the start of the pandemic.
Passengers begin arriving almost four hours before P&O’s Pacific Explorer is scheduled to set sail for Brisbane at 4pm on May 31. It may be their eagerness to avoid being caught out by Covid-19 safety protocols, or perhaps they are just excited to be boarding a ship again after two years, two months and 15 days since the federal government announced a cruise ban.
Passengers or – as they are referred to in P&O’s marketing, and sometimes by each other – “cruiselings” have to prove they are fully vaccinated by uploading their international Covid-19 vaccination certificate and ticking a box online to declare they’ve returned a negative test before embarking.
The check-in process at White Bay Terminal in Rozelle is seamless, despite my best efforts to derail it by arriving without a printed ticket and causing a minor security scare by leaving my bags unattended while interviewing guests.
The staff are unflappable and excessively patient and kind throughout boarding and I soon learn this is, in a nutshell, the joy of cruising. Without fail, multiple times a day, I return to find bed made, pillows plumped and arranged and the tangle of clothes, cables and papers I have left in a mess straightened. I eat greater quantities of rich and decadent food than I ever have from a choice of 18 restaurants.
I learn the convenience of having a buffet, multiple retail outlets, casino, zip line, lawn bowls green, swimming pool and water slide within a short walk down hundreds of metres of Kubrickian corridors.
And when Pacific Explorer takes off I’m shocked by the ship’s smoothness. It is so steady I don’t notice we have departed the terminal until I see the hills of Balmain disappearing into the distance.
When I emerge on to the top deck I find the open-air bar and pool area has erupted into a party. The drinks are flowing and jubilant cruiselings overjoyed to be on the water again are tearing up the dance floor to one ’80s hit after another. A conga line organically forms and snake its way around.
The setting sun has turned the sky glowing pink and the night air coming off the water is cold but this doesn’t deter the cruiselings. The crowd, which is dotted with Hawaiian leis, captains hats and even the odd pirate costume, is only gaining momentum, as effervescent cruise director Julie McEwan sashays through in a navy business suit.
I am suddenly struck by the beauty of Sydney Harbour, appreciated anew from a high vantage point looking down on Sydney’s genteel harbourside suburbs. I think of the refined residents of Mosman and Elizabeth Bay, who have just had the serenity of the extended cruise pause shattered in a cascade of nostalgic pop hits. The harbour has returned to the cruiselings.
Once Pacific Explorer passes through the heads, the ocean becomes choppier and the rhythmic rising and falling of the ship becomes the new normal.
Which, cruising is probably a little different to those who knew it before the pandemic.
Face masks are strongly encouraged in all enclosed spaces where social distancing isn’t possible, and staff point diners towards hand-sanitiser dispensers before they enter restaurants.
When I ask P&O management what the protocol is if, or when, someone tests positive for Covid-19, the answer is the same as it would be anywhere else.
The positive person would be moved to a cabin in a quarantine section of the ship and the party would continue.
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