Murray River in flood

Hi People, sorry for the silence, but while on board Murray Princess we found that telephone and internet service was very patchy.
Back on dry land and now I can  tell you about the trip!
 It was a very pleasant trip, lovely people at our table, naturally the food was absolutely wonderful! we cruised downstream the first day and went as far as Murray Bridge, day 2, and then turned back up stream.The paddle steamer cannot get under the Murray Bridge, even when the river is not in flood! We sort of do a loop, and return to Mannum (the starting point), where we went off on the Barossa Valley tour for the day, while some of the ships company leave and new people arrive. you can cruise for 3, 4, or 7 days. then we struck out upstream, with the river in pretty full flood, the paddle is working pretty hard! There is lots of flooded pasture land beside the river, normally protected by levees, but many of these are damaged due to so long drought times. When we stopped beside various places on the river, mostly it was difficult to get across to dry land, once the crew had to improvise the gangplank with extra bits of wood ratted from along the river edge! The beautiful cliffs that one sees on calendars and such are actually that col;our. I tried to take photos to show it but my camera doesn't handle great panoramas much! Still I tried! Plenty of sulphir crested cockatoos, and corellas, but not much other bird life. evidently it goes into the flood ed parts.
I managed to play bocce and "my" team won, 15 to 1!! In the trivia quiz, again the team I played with one, and I was instrumental in that as we were tied and i went out to do the play off and got 3 questions right in a row, so we won!!
Maxine and I wore authentic costumes for the dress up night, my hawaiin muumuu and a punjabi suit from singapore. Needless to sat we didn't get a prize for it. Some of the costumes were very good. The Captain was judging and was very quick witted in his questions about the significance of the story behind the costume. The night ended up very hilariously!!
One night we had a bbq on shore which was absolutely delcious!they had kangaroo steak I asked the chef how he did it, apparently the secret is to marinate it for 24 hours using good olive oil plus herbs and soy sauce. Thennsear it with a hot plate and leave it quite rare. It was very yummy! I went back for seconds! alyjough the pieces were quite small, luckily.
Last night we had the Captains' Seafood Buffet, oysters and prawns,smoked salmon and trout, and baked barramundi and mussels, also turkey and ham on the bome for those who don't eat seafood! luscious pavlovas finished it off.
The barman was pretty good at making cocktails too!!
All in all a pretty good trip. and they were offering an extremely good discount if you booked another trip before we disembarked, so guess what!!? I am going to fiji sometime in the next 12 months, Kath who I was away with last year as agreed to come with me, so that will be nice. 170 passengers, I think and 7 days around various islands in the fiji group.
Any way that is me for the moment, I npow start exploring South Australia in depth and catching up with a couple of rellies and a friend or two.
So keep well and all my love
 vicki
seafood Buffet