Tuesday 22nd August - We're off!

We left home at 7.30 am, as planned, and headed down the Greensborough Highway, which was already a “car park”, towards the Western Ring Road, which I refer to as a goat track due to the fact that is always being worked on and generally allows users to travel as fast as an aimless goat.

The trip to Avalon Airport was 82kms and took 1hour 10 minutes, an average of 70kph with most of it at a standstill.

Avalon Airport, for domestic use, made sense when it was conceived. 

It was opened in 1953 to cater for the production of military aircraft but in 1997 it was leased to Linfox  for 50+49 years.

Lindsay Fox holds the biennial Australian International Airshow there but it also has a reasonable size terminal for Jetstar (low cost) domestic flights.

We got there in plenty of time and took our last walk  for a week in the cold Melbourne air to the terminal.

The picture above doesn’t show it all that well but it looked like a bus stop outside a retirement village. Yep, more grey haired heads than you could count. It made me laugh. 

And, yes I'm very aware that there are lots more people like me laughing at a bunch of grey haired baby boomers, of which I am one, escaping the Victorian cold to BrisVegas on a bogan (and please let's not kid ourselves that Jetstar is anything more than that) flying bus service from some crappy little airport located out in the boonies owned by yet another super wealthy baby boomer bogan.

Hey, ya gotta laugh!

The flight itself felt far shorter than the 2 hours it took and made me realize just how cramped they are now making the seats. I’m short with even shorter legs and there was just enough room for me to sit.

I pity long legged people, like Angus, as the only option is an exit aisle or the “pointy end”, for which you need to be planning for well in advance or have a lot of money for.

We arrived at the Gold Coast Airport and were welcomed by a 23 degree day.

We picked up the car, a new Commodore station wagon, and drove to our apartment – 20 floor of the Surfers Paradise International. It’s a single bedroom apartment with all the stuff one need to enjoy a week or two and a terrific view of the beach.

Lidia had made us lunch (what can I say other than 👍 ), we took a wander down the beach and finished off the day with dinner at a local Italian restaurant which was disappointing.

What made it extremely disappointing was the fact that they professed to be Veneti (which is where my family originate from) and that they cooked dishes from that region. 

Well, they failed! 

In fact, the highlight of the night was “Lidia’s Walking Tour” on the way home. She has spent so much time up here she knows every nook and cranny. 

Her tour is made all the more enjoyable by the fact that she can be very hard of hearing so conversations, i.e. questions asked of her are occasionally answered with stuff that is totally irrelevant, are as funny as funny can be.

Below are some of the pics I took during our walk.

These stands are everywhere.
They must get a lot of takers even though they always appear to be very quiet.
Tiz and I were very very tempted but we decided to woop it up home instead. 
😉

What can I say?

These things are all along the walkway along the beach.

They are great for showing how things were up here, going back to the '50's

This is a shot, at the end of the night, from our apartment of the 20th floor of
Surfers Paradise International Apartment

We watched a movie called “What Happened to Monday?” which was set in 2073 and based around a “one child family” totalitarian world, which has Willem Dafoe, always a fave of mine, Glenn Close and Noomi Rapace (definitely worth watching - 4/5) then off to bed.