“ARE YOU READY CRUISELIIIINGS?!?!” shouts a harnessed man standing on a platform above the swimming pool on the cruise ship waiting to pull out of Sydney’s White Bay terminal. “YESSS!” yell about 40 per cent of my fellow ‘cruiselings’; the collective noun used to describe myself and my fellow passengers aboard P&O’s Pacific Jewel. “Who’s ready for Dark Mofooooooo?” screams the entertainment overlord. “Yeees?” reply some cruiselings. The question mark hovers in the air above the gyrating plush turtle mascots and brightly dressed crew members, pulsating to the sounds of the resident party-starter DJ K as the ship pulls away from the shore. A zipline runs the length of the ship, and a short lady in a helmet whizzes over the crowd, throwing up dual shaka signs. I start to think about how I got here.
This is the premiere of P&O’s Dark Mofo cruise package, a six-day voyage from Sydney to Hobart which includes entry to MONA and the Winter Feast: the art festival’s carnival of food and booze. I’m on board to report on this deeply interesting aesthetic and conceptual partnering. When you think about a cruise ship, you don’t necessarily think about the fire-spluttering hedonism of Dark Mofo. Cruise ships are for lying stretched out on a banana lounge with a fruit adorned novelty drink in hand. They're for perusing catalogues of maddeningly gentle activities like shuffle board. They're for bathing in waterlogged, latter-year luxury, right? The gothic danger of Dark Mofo is surely the cultural oil to this warm water. And yet, here we are: 1,900 cruiselings churning down the coast to Tasmania, ready to experience it all, together.
The ship was designed and constructed in 1990 and little has changed. It’s a cheesy, floating pleasure centre with hypnotic RSL carpets and tiered shopping and dining options. A kitschy paradise of nostalgic holiday visuals, like that caravan park you used to go to when you were a kid. It has a familiar colour palette and an even more familiar pep. There’s an onboard adventure park called P&OEdge where you are thrust through the air on flying foxes, strapped to aerial rigs or transported along the deck on segways. There’s also a posh restaurant from Luke Mangan called Salt Grill to scratch your upscale dinner itch and at night, the bars, clubs, theatre and in-house casino throb with diverse genres of entertainment.
In the three nights I’ve been afloat I have: sipped a vase full of Long Island Ice Tea while watching a joyful reggae band; watched Steady Eddie from the telly do a stand-up set; and sat-in on some sexy adults-only trivia and avoided the gaze of a wobbly party boy with balloon wings pointing at me with two balloon ‘swords’ while Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ competed with the heady aroma of baby wipes in the Dome nightclub. As Beyoncé once mused, is it a sweet dream or a beautiful nightmare? Who knows. It is pretty fucking fun though.
I am halfway through a conversation about Prince Harry with a lovely lady who has perched next to me at breakfast when I realise that Dark Mofo is perhaps peripheral to the cruise itself for most. This is made clearer when the human equivalent of a cruise loyalty card says “should we go down to the Moo Foo or whatever?” to her fellow merch-wearing mates in the lift. That echoing question mark from our departure still rings. People don’t really care, or maybe even know, where we’re going. The crowd is mostly just older holidaymakers and families with a handful of bemused goths who perhaps thought the ship itself was going to be more Mofo-themed.
I guess that’s what I thought too. Part of me thought I would brave the Tasman and swim to shore if it all became a bit too much. It also becomes apparent that I am an insufferable Sydney snob whose life is dictated by a portfolio of privileged inner-city tastes and an irrational fear of ‘the seas’. I’m a bloody wanker who doesn’t deserve all this vessel has to offer.
There’s free food, bottomless entertainment, strong cocktails in comically tall glassware and grateful, kind people enjoying panoramic ocean views on deck chairs, warmly receiving VB tinnies on platters. I even saw a whale and I’m still being city-cynical. As my friend Katie wisely says; “Don’t yuck someone else's yum.” It's a generous package, the people who work on the ship are super nice and the other cruiselings are palpably excited and relaxed. I'm the idiot.
Dark Mofo may just be the destination of this cruise (again, it is their first Mofo-themed trip) but when else is a turtleneck-clad dickhead like me going to experience a cruise, if not for the promise of a bourgeois arts festival at the end? Perhaps this cruise is more Dark Mofo than even my e-flux reading mind can comprehend. Is this all an experiential live art happening? A Truman-show style performance work where the cruiselings are in fact a cast of challenging white-Australia archetypes for me to reflect upon? It’s 9am and a man next to me just winked over his rum and Coke as he lowered himself into the hot tub. So, nope. It’s not a pompous and paranoid dive into relational aesthetics. It’s just a bunch of people having a bloody great holiday. I think I could get used to this.
Time Out travelled as a guest of P&O Cruises.