Pope Benedict XVI’s marathon journey to Australia gave him a bird’s eye view of a beautiful but battered planet Earth.

The 81-year-old pope, in his first major speech to the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who have converged on Sydney for the World Youth Day festival, talked about the 20-hour flight he made from Rome to join them Down Under _ the longest flight of his three-year-old papacy.

“For some of us, it might seem like we have come to the end of the world,” Benedict told the hordes of cheering, flag-waving young pilgrims who flooded Sydney’s waterfront Thursday to hear him speak. “For people of your age however, any flight is an exciting prospect. But for me, this one was somewhat daunting.”

The pope spent three days recovering from his journey and resting before joining the festival.

Despite the exhausting trip, the pontiff said it gave him the opportunity to ponder the size of the planet and marvel at the sights below.

“The views afforded of our planet from the air were truly wondrous,” he said. “The sparkle of the Mediterranean, the grandeur of the north African desert, the lushness of Asia’s forestation, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, the horizon upon which the sun rose and set, and the majestic splendor of Australia’s natural beauty which I have been able to enjoy these last couple of days _ these all evoke a profound sense of awe.”

“Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our Earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world’s mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption,” said the spiritual leader who has been dubbed “the green pope” for his focus on environmental issues such as global warming.

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PAPAL PASSPORT: When the Aborigines controlled what is now Australia, they required what today are called passports to move from one territory to another.

So when the pope arrived to board his boat, the Sydney 2000, for a cruise along Sydney Harbor on Thursday, he was given his own passport.

The 12-inch-long piece of wood, engraved in a local language, was presented to Benedict by David Ingrey, 53, head of the People of Dharawal, from the Aboriginal region of Rose Bay.

The “passport” welcomed him and said he was safe to travel across the territory.

“We welcome him because he is a spiritual leader and we see in him a man who guarantees the law,” Ingrey said.

Earlier, the pontiff was given a traditional Aboriginal welcome by a dance troupe dressed in animal pelts and with their bodies painted white. In two separate speeches Thursday, Benedict praised the Australian government for apologizing for past wrongs wrought on the country’s indigenous people in the 220 years since white settlers arrived.

“I wish firstly to thank the Aboriginal elders who welcomed me prior to my boarding the boat,” Benedict said in his speech to thousands of pilgrims. “I am deeply moved to stand on your land, knowing the suffering and injustices it has borne, but aware too of the healing and hope that are now at work.”

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has promised to make reducing Aboriginal levels of poverty, alcoholism and early death a priority of his government.

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PLAGUED PILGRIMS: An outbreak of gastroenteritis and the flu has sickened nearly 80 pilgrims attending World Youth Day.

Forty-seven pilgrims being housed at a college in the city’s northwest have been isolated with the flu, said New South Wales director of communicable diseases Jeremy McAnulty. Nine pilgrims staying at Olympic Park were also diagnosed with flu-like symptoms while 22 out of 36 pilgrims staying at a venue in northern Sydney were hit with gastroenteritis, also known as the stomach flu.

Patients are being isolated until they are no longer contagious, said McAnulty, who added such outbreaks are common during the Australian winter, which runs from June through August.

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TOP COP: A police officer who battled cancer received a blessing and rosary beads from the pope _ and lent the pontiff his cap in return.

Benedict modeled the police hat after blessing 54-year-old Senior Constable Gary Hill, who was taken to the pope’s Kenthurst retreat Wednesday in a hospital bed, New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said.

Hill was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2004, suffered a brain tumor in 2005 and was stricken with a heart tumor in 2006. Doctors said he had only a small chance of survival, but Hill _ a Catholic _ fought the disease and returned to work. Last week, Hill suffered seizures and had to return to the hospital.

“It just shows the human face of someone who is so very important,” Scipione said. “It touched a lot of police to know that he would go to those lengths to make one of our very sick officers so happy.”

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Associated Press writer Victor L. Simpson contributed to this report.