Viking’s Australia to Bali cruise delivers the perfect environment for a mother-and-daughter reunion voyage to reconnect, share new adventures and create unforgettable memories that will last a lifetime.
I feel a sharp prod in my ribs and, when I turn to see why my daughter, Juliet, has poked me, she is frantically pointing downwards and, with the sound of my own heavy breathing and bubbles filling my ears, I look through my mask to see a magnificent, pale grey shark slowly swimming below us. He’s about three metres long and has a distinct dark smudge on his dorsal fin indicating he’s a blacktip reef shark – happily, completely benign when it comes to humans.
Clad in our Bond villain-looking, top-to-toe ‘stinger suits’ to protect us from the dangerous jellyfish that thrive at this time of year on the Great Barrier Reef, for the next 20 minutes we continue to use our flippers to glide above the shark as it makes slow, meandering process around the kaleidoscopic corals. Its movements, gentle pulses with strong tail and side-to-side sweeps of pointy head, are mesmerising. Only when we reach a lengthy rope attached to buoys, indicating the edge of the ‘safe’ snorkelling zone, do we come to a halt, observing as our shark disappears into the distance, likely hunting for a juicy mullet or octopus for lunch.
Back on the platform of the ‘dive’ boat that’s brought us out here from Cairns in Queensland, we’re giggly – almost giddy – at our good fortune at witnessing the shark.
It’s the icing on the cake of our four hours’ snorkelling experience.
Nemo & friends
While we’ve been in the bath-warm water, we’ve also seen hundreds of brightly coloured clownfish (yes, we not only found Nemo but thousands of his friends), parrotfish, angelfish and butterflyfish, not to mention extraordinary giant clams and coral so brilliantly violet it almost made our eyes hurt.
“I can’t believe how lucky we are to see that shark. This is the best day ever!” laughs Juliet breathlessly and I can’t help but agree.
Such an exhilarating bonding experience is just what I’d been hoping for on this cruise together in Australia and Indonesia after 13 months apart. Our 16-night voyage aboard Viking Venus started in Sydney and ended in Bali, with port calls in Newcastle, Brisbane, The Whitsunday Islands, Townsville, Cairns, Darwin, Rinca Island and Lombok.
My 24-year-old daughter, Juliet had left our London home to move to Australia’s Gold Coast a year earlier. Nothing had prepared me for the physical ache I would feel being separated from my child for so long. This cruise is proving the perfect way of spending magical time together indulging our shared passions. And the Great Barrier Reef shark adventure isn’t the only time our mutual love of wildlife is encouraged.
When we stop in Darwin, we opt to go on an excursion on the Adelaide River. Drifting aboard an open-sided vessel just inches above the water, we gaze as terrifying hungry-looking saltwater crocodiles repeatedly emerge and submerge, looking for their next meal. During the safety briefing, when we’re told where to find our life jackets should there be an accident, our guide cheerfully adds “but they’ll be completely useless as the crocs will have you before you get the chance to drown!”
It’s fascinating to observe these creatures go about their business in their natural habitat as we learn they have roamed the region for more than 200 million years and pre-date many dinosaurs. The reason for their survival? “Their ruthless efficiency as hunters,” says the guide, a shiver going down my back.
After surviving that excursion with apex predators, our hike on Rinca Island – a truly remote Indonesian island that we feel privileged to reach courtesy of being on the cruise ship – yields multiple close sightings of another deadly species. Komodo dragons, the world’s largest lizards, call this island home. Their teeth are famously iron-coated and their saliva is said to be the most toxic of any animal on the planet, so we’re surprised how close our local guide takes us to them – though the big stick he’s carrying provides some reassurance.
Animals of a fluffier, cuter kind are our agreed highlight of an excursion to Australia Zoo outside of Brisbane, the life’s work of the late, great naturalist Steve Irwin, which is renowned across the globe for its conservation work. We see scores of koalas – even visiting some in recovery at the animal hospital – and, my personal favourite of the antipodean marsupial kingdom, wombats.
Famous for their ‘buns of steel’ rear ends, which they use to defend their burrows, Juliet is especially taken upon discovering wombats are the only animal on the planet to produce cube-shaped poo. Apparently, evolution has made it so that they can mark their territory with no risk of the poo rolling away.
Witnessing stingrays and greenback turtles during a kayaking trip from Airlie Beach in The Whitsunday Islands, and learning about Droughtmaster cattle – bred to survive tropical temperatures – at Mungalla Aboriginal Cattle Station on an excursion from Townsville, are further experiences that cast indelible impressions on us.
Stories of his Nywaigi ancestors pour from the mouth of Jacob Cassady, who manages the station. He also teaches us about the medicinal plants in the bush here, as well as demonstrating impressive boomerang-throwing skills. Given our own boomerangs to throw, Juliet and I end up crying with laughter as we’re utterly hopeless and only manage to hurl them a couple of paltry metres.
But it’s not only the wonderful day trips that make our mother-and-daughter time so precious. The vast distances covered by this itinerary, which takes in the Pacific Ocean and the Coral, Arafura and Timor Seas, mean that between many port calls there are leisurely days at sea, allowing bonding over other joint interests on our beautiful ship – and not just reading our books while lounging by the various swimming pools.
Culture fix
One afternoon during a tropical downpour, we don headsets and link to our Viking app to take a guided tour of the incredible original artwork collection onboard. We’d often visit galleries together in the UK and this experience is reminiscent as we view sketches and pen and inks by Norwegian great Edvard Munch, stunning black and white dot paintings by Scandinavian artist Danny Larsen, and our favourites, witty three-dimensional knitted creations by UK-based Kate Jenkins – her cheeky crab eating a plate of spaghetti the one we agree we’d buy if we were art collectors.
Massages in the spa, gossips in the hydrotherapy pool, cardio and weight-lifting sessions in the gym, we pack our days with as much activity as possible to allow for maximum indulgence in the many bars and eateries on board. The osso buco followed by tiramisu at Manfredi’s Italian takes some beating, but it’s the Chinese five-course tasting menu with accompanying wines at The Chef’s Table that comes out as our top dining experience overall. Expertly made, post-prandial decaffeinated espresso martinis in Explorers’ Lounge on a few evenings are, meanwhile, sheer hedonistic heaven.
Back home, family get-togethers with friends would inevitably finish with an all-ages kitchen disco (Juliet grew up on a diet of Donna Summer, Abba and the Jackson Five). So towards the end of the cruise, when there’s a pool party and dancing under the stars, it’s little surprise we hit the dance floor with enthusiasm. Indeed, we don’t skip a single song as we kick up our heels and boogie with the other passengers.
It’s a completely carefree, joyous evening, perfectly encapsulating what this voyage means to us – time together doing things we love and creating new shared memories that will last us both a lifetime.
