Trip Report: Day 2, Finally, It's After Noon

Lunch time! I dropped my vest, water bottle and cap in the sea chest nearest the fire hearth. (We'd been told to wear blue or white tops if possible and I only had two decent blue t-shirts. I took them and wore the navy blue one on the first day, which worked well while guiding, but. I wasn't quite keen enough to head into city wearing Lady Nelson on my t-shirt and HMB Endeavour on my cap :)


The plan for lunch was to drop camera batteries at hotel room to recharge and grab something to eat. I had a bright idea though. If i bought another card for the camera, I could take photos and retake them without worrying about running out of space, and thus, put less demand on the battery. I had ten less minutes that I should have had and I wasn't sure where to do to bu a new card. As I looking for somewhere to get lunch, I saw Harvey Norman up the road a bit, so I walked up there. It was a little bit more than I wanted to pay and they didn't want to serve me anyway. *sigh* I walked back to the Mall to look for something for lunch. Now it was 2.13. I had to be back at the Fire hearth at 2.30, so I had 17 minutes to get something to eat, eat it, go back to the hotel, grab battery and then walk to the ship. Possibly. Then I saw a Tandy shop. Did I have time to drop in there and buy a card? It was on the way back to the hotel, and if I could get back to the hotel by 2.20, I'd be right.

Lady in Tandy was serving someone with a big order but I must have looked impatient because she served me while he was looking for his card. 2 mins. Bakery two shops down that sells pies. I think meat pies are the least economical way to get a meal ($4 for a bit of pasty & some meat, bah) but it's food. Eat while I'm walking back to hotel. Grab battery, swap cards in camera, put drink in fridge in common room and back downstairs. 2.25. Walk quickly down the road, over the overpass which is obviously unlocked at this time, and collapse on the sea chest near the firehearth as the bell sounds. Am I good, or what?

Get dressed and I'm ready to go. Fairly straight forward session and then onto the great cabin. Is is supposedly one of the areas guides prefer to do. Each to their own, I guess. There are a lot of unrelated bits to talk about. People are wandering about and you don't know if they're listening. Other people come in, while you're in the middle of talking so they hear some of it and not all, unless you start again, then someone else comes in. It might be easier if it was busier (just talk and not try to keep track of who has heard what) or less busy.

There's a short passage leading from the Gentlemen's Mess (actually it's the Officers Mess and Gentlemen's Cabins), with a washstand on one side and a cabin window on the other.





The great cabin is usually occupied by the captain and, it's probably the biggest space of all (actually the mess deck is bigger but point is made), but when Banks and his scientists were on board, they used this cabin.



On the table, you can see some botanical prints. You might have noticed Dr Solander's cabin when you first came up the ladder (not in the photos though, I was sitting with my back to it). Every plant speciment collected was drawn, dried and taken back to England. On the end of the table are the charts, you can look through them.



The cabin on the left here, behind all the doors, is Cook's cabin.




You can see it through the window just before the door, you might have seen it when you came in. The cabin over to the right is Banks' cabin.




He's said to have been 6'4 tall, so he preferred to sleep out here and his two dogs slept in the cabin. They were used for hunting down game (a greyhound & a spaniel), so they did earn their keep.

Banks' desk is just there. The books above it are taken from a list of 120 books that he brought with him, the actual editions were researched and the bindings recreated.



The stove is copied from one that was recovered from the wreck of the Pandora, who was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef while bringing back Bounty mutineers.

On the walls and beams, you'll see various gifts given by native people to the Endeavour on her recent visits. (Two mentioned in the guide book are) The long one hanging over table there (a taiaha) and the carved one nearby (a manaia) are gifts from the Maori people in gratitude for the Endeavour replica returning the souls of five men killed by Cook in 1770. (Both visible in the next photo, which is taken with no flash, so you can get an idea of how light the room was. The other photos are all taken with the flash on, so the immediate area is lit but the rest is dark.)



In the stern post is a brass ring, inside that is a trunnel. Did you see the small black circles on the deck? Under those are the trunnels, the long wooden nails used to hold the planks down. That one was taken on the US space shuttle Endeavour in 1992. Then it was put there to create a symbolic link between sea and space.

The floor does slope a bit, but it would have been moving this and that way, and then that way too. Have you been up on the foredeck and seen the bowsprit? In some storms, that would end up in the water so you can imagine how much the ship moves. Still the artists managed to draw with a steady hand.

Feel free to have a look around.



The window has been taken out and put in that holder on the side.



Those stern window seats are very nice to sit in.