World Cruise QM2 Melbourne and our world cruise special event

8th March Sunday. Melbourne 22 degrees C

Awoken at 2am by the captain asking for people with a certain blood group who are blood donors with cards to go to medical department immediately. 
Must have been serious because they were only four hours out of Melbourne. We learnt later in the day that ten people volunteered blood, and the lady was stabilised and shipped to hospital once we arrived in Melbourne.

Had my walk followed by breakfast. Judith stayed in bed till 9am, but l didn’t see Chris and Jill until later. In fact not until we left the ship for the shuttle that took us into town.

It was very busy, being a Sunday. Or we initially thought, but it turned out to be some kind of bank holiday. 

We mooched without a great deal of aim. I had wanted to go round the botanical gardens and see a famous lane full of street art. The others wanted to get coffee, hot cross buns and shopping. 

We managed to get to the lane, but it wasn’t as amazing as l had hoped. 
The whole place looked rather grubby compared to our last visit. Judith and the others were not impressed, but l would come back when we can spend more time, and really dig below the surface to see what it’s really like.

Returned to the ship for lunch, then decided to go for an hours walk along the sea front, which really looked interesting. It didn’t materialise. The ship slipped its moorings, and they had to realign to get the gangway reattached. By the time they had done that, queues had built up, both on the ship heading out, and at the docks heading on.

We had to be down in the ballroom in our evening ware by 4.30 for the transfer to the evenings world travellers dinner at the posh hotel in the centre of Melbourne. The food was being provided by the famous UK chef Blumenthal and we were going to be wined and entertained by some feature acts, along with presentations from the captain and the CEO of Cunard. They had to ship us there by bus, so we needed to be down between 4.30 and 5pm. We got there just after 4.30, but the ballroom was already heaving. They issued us with tickets for the buses, and it didn’t take long to get called for the disembark.
20 minutes later we were ushered into the crowded reception area, buzzing with revellers, happily drinking away. Unfortunately for us, the bar was closed, but it didn’t cause us too much of a problem, because once inside the ballroom our glasses were never empty. The evening started with an Aboriginal musician, come story teller. Then we had the captain, followed by the Cunard CEO, then straight into an opera singer, who was thunderingly good. Food arrived, wine flowed, more singers then a upbeat dance group. It was tremendous fun. Virtually everyone was poured onto the buses and returned to the ship.
Met up with Chris and Jill for a night cap of lemon juice and off to bed.