ON THE ROAD AGAIN, THIS TIME TO BRISBANE, MAY 1991

In Sydney, we hired a car to use during our vacation there. On our third day we all piled into the car and, loaded with goodies headed north along the coast of eastern Australia with a final destination of Brisbane, Australia. As always, Deysi had the car packed with games, snacks, books and other diversions for the girls. Their question, when told that we would be driving to Brisbane was “dad can’t we afford to fly anymore?” I felt that they would never learn the beauty of sightseeing, and they didn’t, for many years. All they could think of was the shortest line between two swimming pools, that being on an airplane. Their mom and I were pumped and so excited to be able to drive the coast of Australia and take in all of the sights.

Promises of a beach, pool, movies and in room dining, mollified the girls in the back for a couple of hours. Armed with her trusty map, Deysi plotted our course and guided the “safari” out of Sydney and up the highway to the north. At this time there was no such thing as GPS and if you would have mentioned such a possibility, people would have thought you “mad”. Deysi didn’t need one, a keen sense of direction was already implanted in her brain. That coupled with her “driver’s” calm, cool and controlled approach to tense situations, provided for very peaceful journeys. As a team, we only got lost once, by the time we reached the outskirts of Sydney. Amazingly, we had already been on the road at least one half hour.

I hadn’t yet told the girls that we had about a 7 hour ride in front of us. As it was, I opened the car door, threw in the games and treats, waited for them to dive in, and closed and locked the doors. I ran around the other side jumped in, threw it into gear and headed out on our way.We chose Coffs Harbour as our stopover point on the trip to visit Brisbane. It was about 65% of the way there. We followed the coastal highway and arrived in late afternoon, just in time to check in and head to the pool. The trip was beautiful, the scenery wild, (the kids in the back, both beautiful and wild), at times rugged and in other places serene with splendid sand beaches stretching for miles.

A couple of times in our conversations the thought of stopping and settling down (for good) entered our minds. The place we chose to spend the night was the Hotel Pelican Beach, in Coffs Harbour. As the name suggests, it had miles of sand beach. The hotel reception was entered at ground level with the rooms, dining, swimming, and gardens falling off beneath, in floors, built down the cliffside to the beach level. Magnificent seemed appropriate. The day was overcast, but warm. We spent the pre-dinner hours walking the beach and letting the girls test out the pool and hot tub.

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Next morning, bright and early we are up, loaded and headed north towards Brisbane. Next stop the Gold Coast just outside of Brisbane. We arrived around lunch time and immediately started looking for things to do and see. First on the list was an animal park, called Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary at the Gold Coast. It was a large park and most of the animals had a fairly free range, to frolic around in. At the time it boasted about 750 animals. The girls were excited and reckoned that this was their type of sightseeing. Cameras in hand we embarked.

It was a walk-around park with many different tours. Ron was into animals of any sort, whether they walked, crawled, slid on their bellies, flew, swam or otherwise inhabited the earth by any means. She had no fear. Ange was a little more timid but was still in training by her sensei, so she reluctantly took part in the feeding and petting as instructed. Deysi was part animal herself and had great experience taming and training me. She had no fear. For my part I carried the bags and did as I was instructed. It was a large park and the afternoon passed quickly.

The next 3 days we spent bumming around between the Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise and Brisbane. At the Gold Coast we stayed in a casino and connected shopping complex. The girls figured, “finally, we have arrived”! Once again, like everyplace else that we had seen, the beaches were spectacular, the weather beautiful and the action steady.

Here we split our time between the beaches and the shopping mall. I even managed to squeeze in a little game of chance, or two, while the girls were out shopping. Brisbane was a large city a few miles up an estuary from the Gold Coast. It appeared to be more of an industrial city than Sydney and, in our minds, not quite as pretty. We kicked around there looking at the sights and relaxed on the nearby beaches. All in preparation for the next legs of our journey in Fiji and then Hawaii. We spent one week on the east coast of Australia ending up in Brisbane. We flew from there, back to Aukland and then on to Fiji. See you there.