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 Probus - Photo Comp winner enjoys a Greek adventure
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Photo Comp winner enjoys a Greek adventure

The 2016 Probus National Photographic Competition winner, Berys McEvoy, kindly tells us about her incredible prize. She enjoyed a wonderful holiday on the island of Crete valued at over $20,000 courtesy of Voyages to Antiquity and Cruise Traveller. And she still had time to take some amazing photos. 

My son Phillip and I flew out of Melbourne on 18 September to claim my prize for the Probus South Pacific Photo Competition. With great anticipation, we travelled via Singapore, Dubai, and then Cyprus, and were excited to finally reach Athens and join our cruise. Above is a photo I took on the beautiful island of Crete. 

We were met at Athens Airport and taken to the beautiful Grand Bretagne Hotel, right in the centre of the city. We were looked after very well, especially in the restaurant! Because of the extreme heat in Athens we decided to stick near the hotel for the three days before our cruise. We loved hearing about the history of the city and were especially impressed by the Parthenon. 

We were taken by coach to join the Aegean Odyssey in Piraeus, the port of Athens. Upon boarding we were met with a rose, a bottle of wine and some chocolates. 

Setting off to the island of Hydra that night, we saw a wonderful sunset and red moon. We anchored in the bay, where most passengers boarded a smaller boat to visit the shore. I decided to spend the day on the ship relaxing and photographing the beautiful scenery. This is one of the photos I took from the ship. 

The next port of call was the island of Santorini. We saw another stunning sunset, but the weather was very grey and cloudy when we finally anchored at the bottom of a cliff the next morning. I was disappointed that my mobility issues stopped me from being able to board the smaller boat to visit the island, because it looked beautiful. Instead I waited on deck for the weather to clear so that I could take some more photos.

Thankfully, the weather improved later in the day and I managed to get some photos of the chair lift going to the top of the mountain. When the weather closed in again, the Captain decided to quickly pull up anchor and sail to the island of Crete. Sailing away from the storm was very rough. I was worried about being on a ship, so Phillip and I decided to stay on the island of Crete for the rest of the tour.

Crete is a very interesting place with a lot of history. It was especially fascinating to hear about the Australians having been there in World War Two. There is a cemetery there for our men, but regrettably we didn’t get to visit their graves.

We found it very funny to hear the Crete men calling themselves “Cretins” – it has a totally different meaning there to what it does here. We decided to keep that to ourselves though.

After spending a week in Crete we flew back to Athens for a few days, then it was back on a plane to commence our journey home. This meant another overnight stay in Dubai, then six lovely days in Singapore, before arriving back in Melbourne on 5 October. This is one of the many photos I took in Singapore. 

Thank you to everyone at Probus South Pacific for this great prize and for giving us the opportunity to visit the Mediterranean. I’m only sorry we couldn’t finish our planned time on the ship, but we still had a wonderful holiday. 

Great news! We are launching the 2017/18 Probus National Photographic Competition in the April/May issue of Active Retirees. Please pick up a copy of the magazine for details on how to enter.