Hi Everyone
My name is Captain Neil Turnbull and I have recently been given the honor of taking command of the 
wonderful, friendly and welcoming P&O Cruises Australia superliner Pacific Dawn, which is currently offering a variety of spectacular itineraries out of the beautiful port of Brisbane.
I hail from a little known Australian dependency in the northern hemisphere called ‘England’ and I recently obtained permission from queen Kylie (of the ‘Minogue’ household) to transfer from The P&O Cruises UK fleet to the Australian fleet ( I find this little elaboration makes the ‘Aussies’ more ready to accept me as the new ‘POME’ on the block??).
I am 38 + valued added tax (which is currently a stifling 15% in the UK – but don’t get me started on that!!), I’m married to the beautiful and my beloved Jayne and we share (well, are ruled by actually) our life with our 4 wonderful children ; Ben (6), Luke (4), Jack (3) and the apple of my eye, Charlotte (2). When home, We live an extremely happy, albeit somewhat hectic, life in a converted Dairy, on a farm, in the wilds of rural Derbyshire.
I have been at sea for some 26 years, initially as a cadet and junior deck officer working my way up through the ranks on a variety of cargo ships, tankers and high speed craft before moving to P&O Cruises UK and Princess passenger ships in 1997. I was appointed my first command in 2009 onboard Aurora and in February 2010 took over command of Pacific Dawn. As Captain, I consider myself to be extremely fortunate in that I am able to do a job that I love, and along with my valued crew, am charged with taking people on holiday and, hopefully, provide them with a wonderful cruise experience and some happy and long lasting memories – and I get paid for doing it – how good is that?
Although having occasionally visited Australia and New Zealand over the past 26 years on various ships, these previous visits were inevitably and always fleeting visits associated with calls during P&O Cruises UK ships annual world voyage cruises and my younger days on cargo ships – it would therefore be presumptuous of me to suggest that prior to now, I never had the opportunity to properly experience (and understand) the Australian culture and lifestyle. As such, It was with great trepidation that I left the snows of rural Derbyshire in Mid February to take command of Pacific Dawn thousands of miles away in the sundrenched port of Brisbane. Putting things in perspective, my expectations of life ‘down under’ were mainly based on what I had observed through my teen years by a combination of characters and plots portrayed through ‘Neighbours’ , ‘Home and Away’ and ‘Prisoner cell block H’ – those ‘wonderful’ TV series that Australia incessantly inflicted on us in The UK through the eighties’ and nineties’ (which I believe may have been Australia’s revenge for us previously inflicting on them all those series of Benny Hill through the seventies’ – Touche ??). Sufficed to say, these were all traumatic experiences of my youth that I don’t like to talk about and have inevitably scarred me for life!! Having now arrived, and I believe to be adjusting to, life in the Southern hemisphere, I am delighted to concede that The wonderful people of Australia would appear to be more akin to those cast members of Neighbours and Home and away as opposed to Prisoner cell block H – this, much to my relief, appears to be particularly true with regard to the ladies.
Since arriving on board I have found that both the crew and passengers of Pacific Dawn have been unquestioningly warm, welcoming and accepting of me, the ‘boy’ from Derbyshire, and I very much look forward to the remainder of this and my future tenures on board the magnificent and happy Pacific Dawn, where I know we will make and share those happy and long lasting experiences and memories for her valued crew and passengers.
One final note, just to clarify from day one, I’m The Captain, it’s my ship and as such, I don’t have an accent, it’s the other 2700 persons on board that have the accent 
Neil Turnbull – Captain
Pacific Dawn
