Monday, 16 February 1948. This morning I woke to see from my porthole, to the starboard, what looked like abrupt hills rising direct from the water but after the haze of dawn cleared I could see that the ship was in the middle of a large, land-locked bay. The sea had moderated but we were about three hours late in making our dock and breakfast was served at the usual hour and sittings. Passengers for Auckland had to have their baggage ready by 8 AM but that was the only preliminary preparation. After breakfast we steamed slowly along the bay which gradually closed in; finally we made a sudden turn to starboard into an inlet from the bay and Auckland lay before us, on both sides of the inlet. It looked a busy place. On our left was a flying boat basin and on the right the Navy Yard, in which two cruisers and a destroyer were at anchor. A press boat came out [illegible] to meet us and I was inter- viewed by a couple of pleasant lads whose subsequent article in the Auckland Star was restrained and reasonable. Something over a hundred passengers left the ship here, including Charles Wilmot, whose brother, I found out, either was or is Minister of Supply in England. The business of taking baggage down to the dock and the process of exami- nation was the most disgracefully sloppy job I have ever seen in connection with anything pertaining to the sea. Baggage was shot from a chute, many pieces were ripped and torn and the men who received the bags on the dock just dumped them anywhere. The letters of the alphabet were not separated as they have been in any other port I have ever seen, but grouped A-E, F-K, L-P, and Q-Z. Thus the baggage of at least seven persons was all piled up in one heap. The unloading is done by the dock workers, who are highly and horribly unionized and as it was noon when the baggage reached the dock, they quit work then and nothing further was done until 1 PM. Wilmot, Van and I went ashore together and Wilmot decided to come back later in the afternoon rather than wait for his stuff to reach the wharf. A room had been reserved for him by his agent at Wellington but to his dismay he found that he could not get a drink there as he was an honorary, bot a subscribing member of the club in which the room was. We went a little further and found a beer bar in the Grand Hotel, which could have been almost any one of many inns in England that I have been in. After our beer we had an excellent lunch, Van mailed our letters and went up to the Museum, a War Memorial, while Charles and I went over the town and ended at the Art Museum. The paintings were pretty bad but the things concerning New Zealand were of considerable interest. The town itself is rather on the dingy side and the prices of articles in the shop windows was very high. The dollar is worth 6/1 but even at that rate of exchange I would estimate the prices that I saw as the same or higher than in New York. Some of the passengers who have returned from visits to New York, London, Paris, etc. will, I imagine, have some difficulty in readjusting to New Zealand small-town conditions. As far as I can tell, we have not taken on as many passengers as we dis- embarked, at least judging from the empty seats at dinner. We are now heading noth, retracing our track of the morning for a time, and then turn due west. In- structions have been given to batten down tight so heavy weather must be expected. Crossing the Tasman Sea we shall receive the full force of weather straight from the South Pole as there is nothing between us now and the Antarctic. However, we are due in Sydney at 8 AM on the 20th and then the next chapter of the journey starts.