Friday 25th August - Marino rejoins the throngs of grey aliens

As quickly as the headache and sore throat came it went.
Good bloody riddance.
We decided to take
Lidia for a drive and thought Mount Tambourine would be nice.

It was a 45 minutes drive through lush forest and quite pleasant.

Mount Tambourine centre is a main street with "touristy" shops on both sides selling trinkets, handcrafts, secondhand clothing at hight than retail prices, bits of wood with stuff stuck to them that are meant to remind one of their visit there, the obligatory lolly shop and in this case a winery.

Everything that I mentioned earlier, albeit dinky and sad, can be expected with the notalbe exception of a winery.

I mean, when did anyone mention a winery when talking about the things that Queensland has and or does well?

Beer? Yes. Big tick there, and their craft brews get better and better.

Hippy stuff, e.g. crystal and kaftans and bush ganja etc.? Yes. Maleny. I rest my case.

Satanic communities? Yes. See above.

Mexicans? Yes. We're here aren't we?! 

Friendly folk? Yes. 

Enclaves to show how ostentatiously rich your  are? Yes. Teneriffe, Mermaid Beach, Surfers Paradise, Southport along the canals are just a few examples.    

Wineries? The answer could easily be "You've been sampling too much of Nimbin's flora!" 

That's a "No" if you don't get the Nimbin reference.

We didn't even bother going in. 

Here are some pics of the walk we took down the main street of Mount Tambourine (or is it Tamborine?) -

Tasselldom.
What the ..... is that?

Are you following me around?

I'm sure there is a great story behind the naming of this place

Two of the three best looking people in the village that day 

Formula - Buy old stuff. 

Hang it out on a tree to display. 

Ask more than new retail.

Wait ...... wait ..... wait ....... 

Everyone sells coffee. Most sell food, such as burgers.

All of it seems mediocre. 

Cuckoo and grandfather clock shop

Every place has to a have a Greek guy called George running an eatery.

But a seafood place up in the hills? 

Despite my reservations of his choice of location I believe he does rather well.

We bought some fudge and some salted liquorice from this lolly shop.

The fudge was sweeeeet and the liquorice just salty enough. 

Yes, every community needs a "tea house". 

Yeah ........ but nah

A place that sells "fairy" stuff and dreamcatchers and other stuff that collects dust dreams.

There was one place left, that was recommended by a workmate of Tiz, 

The Tamborine Mountain Distillery 

We were told that the guy that owns it has probably been "getting high on his own supply" and is pretty "out there". He sounds like a soul mate of mine.

Unfortunately he wasn't in and we had a very helpful and knowledgeable young lady serve us.

We tasted quite a few of the liqueurs they make, using grape based grappa/vodka, and they were all extremely good.

As a matter of interest -

Grappa is an alcoholic beverage, a fragrant, grape-based pomace brandy of Italian origin that contains 35 to 60 percent alcohol by volume.

Vodka, by one definition, has to be distilled to 95% alcohol or greater, from any material, and “needs to be neutral spirits distilled or treated after distillation with charcoal so as to be without character, aroma, taste, or colour.”

My suggestion is to go to the town first, use the public toilets as the distillery does not have any and then go and settle into a big tasting session.

On the way home we thought we might stop off at the fish co-op and get a feed of fish 'n' chips for lunch. There happens to be a good one next to where we are shacked up - Palazzo Versace.

You select the fish you want, you take it to the counter, they cook it and you eat it.

It not cheap though.

Below is pictorial proof of how it looks inside, what there produce looks like after being cooked and me not being able to leave anything behind. 

Below are some pictures I took on our walk along the beach in the afternoon.

 We noticed the dredger manoeuvring for it's daily routine so I snapped a bit of a time lapse sequence

I'd been in touch with Fiona, whom I used to work with many years ago, and as she and her family had moved up here a while back we though it a good idea to catch up.

This is Fee.

Big thanks to you Fee, we had an awesome night.

Fee made a bunch of suggestions and one of them was to catch up at the Helensvale Nightquarter

Queensland may well be behind we Mexican in many ways but this place makes up for many of their backward ways.

So, we met with Fee, her most excellent husband Andrew and few of her equally excellent friends at Nightquarter and had a great night. 

One regret for the day was having eaten all the fish 'n' chips, which left no room for a taste of the exquisite tasting 'Murican BBQ everyone else at my table were chowing down on.

Note to self - take more pictures when you go out, instead of stealing pics from your friends website!

Thursday 24th August - Today has been cancelled

I woke up today with a splitting headache and a sore throat.
I decided to cancel the day and do nothing.
Goal achieved! 👍

Wednesday 23rd August - Settled in

Our first "wake up" on the Gold Coast met us with ~15 deg C.

If nothing else, this place is certainly not hard on old bones and joints because of its weather. 

A view along the beach from very close to our apartment

This map gives you an idea of the area we travelled around on our cruise in the afternoon.

 All the pictures that follow were taken on the cruise. 

I'm not sure which canals we down but I do know 

- the cruise took 90 minutes, 

- there are more canals here than in Venice and Amsterdam combined 

- the cruise company have their own beer (260 New brewed by Burleigh Brewing and named after one of their captains that had a "touch of rust" a while back, from which he recovered) 

- Bob Ell is the Gold Coast's richest man, although you would never know it looking at his house, which was so ordinary I didn't even take a picture of it, and I couldn't find one online. We were told that he is buying up every house in his street to expand the existing place.

Noisey side neighbours?

Buy them out and bulldoze what was theirs!

Infinity pools are very "ho hum" around here. 

This catamaran really took my fancy. 

It looked fast just sitting there.

Given what I know about boats it could also be an absolute slug.

Another titbit of information we got from the cruise was that there is a 3year waiting list to get a spot for your boat at this very exclusive Southport Marina.

Feng Shui dictates you have a hole in your building. 

Any chance this place has a Chinese link?

The pictures above are of a place we passed by.

I reminded me of the Led Zeppelin meme ..... but this owner could say

"So you have a gun and a mooring for your boat? ........"

Some places would not be out of place in a normal suburb, like Bulleen.
Enough concrete balustrading to make any Italian proud.

 Some places look like they are just plain ordinary little houses 

built on a budget a long time ago

There's ostentatious ....

..... and then you step it up a couple of notches with this sort of place

I'm not really sure what this boat/ship/barge is doing but it seems like it is clearing a sand bar? Maybe I'll ask a local, who will probably be from Victoria anyway!

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.   

Three more sleeps to go

It's Saturday night and we've just spent the day at Tiz's brother's place in Frankston ...... South.
Please note the "South", as it is very significant, if you live there.
Much like Heidelberg West, their version is Frankston North, and Heidelberg Heights, the former is "metho and boot polish and the other is "tequila and craft beer".

It was Jake Gava's first birthday and in traditional Gava style we ate and drank very well by way of celebrating.

Back to the holiday blog.
It has been a long time since I have looked forward to break as much as this and a long time since a break, period.
The "looking forward" comes from the recent lack of satisfaction and frustration at work.
Not in living memory has an employer given me such an inaccurate impression of how they operate nor have I ever misread a potential employer during an interview and failed to ask the right questions.
I am very sure that there is no future with them, based on my constant lack of sleep and total lack of achievement, but I will think about it and a graceful exit for the next week.

The weather here in Melbourne has been wet and cold, ~4-18degC every day compared to dry and 18-26degC in BrisVegas. The temperature difference alone should be enough to lift my spirits.

I spoke to Tiz's niece, who is very high up in another educational institution and is also one of the brightest young women I have come across in a long time. She agrees with me and empathises with the fact that these long established tertiary education institutions have a long standing set of procedures that are counter-productive but so hard hard to change.
These procedures are exalted as necessary for probity and governance but in fact are used for CYA (Cover Your A$$) and a justification for "It's not my job." response.
This applies to seeking information from those that know or know who does but can't be bothered sharing it or helping.
It's debilitating and I need to get away from this sort of environment before I have another heart attack.

Tiz has been doing her fair share of planning and has come up with a bunch of things to do that will make our stay up north both enjoyable and relaxing.

Our $9 flight to the Gold Coast leaves from Avalon Airport at 10am. It takes 1 hour from our place to get there. We need to be at the check in 1 hour before the flight leaves. That means that prudence dictates that we leave home at 7am.
Given the state of our roads, airport security checks and comfortable early arrival buffer that should be just right.

Home to Avalon Airport

Avalon Airport to Gold Coast Airport

Roll on Tuesday morning, you cannot get here soon enough 😊
 

Lidia has left the building ....

..... in fact, she's left the state!
Yes, she's headed up to to BrisVegas and the warmer climate just this morning.
Given the unusually cold winter we've had she must be really glad to be up there.

So, it's only about five weeks before we go too and we're both looking forward to it 😌