Back home in W.A.

We are home. Every trip away is good if one has a return airfare ticket!

The flight from Brisbane to Perth was five hours and 15 minutes. Once again I sat in the middle of a three row seat and got arm cramps trying to eat lunch. Daughter Helen was at the airport to meet us and drive us home....thanks Hel!

Over the past few days we have done much driving and siteseeing. After the Gold Coast and the reunion, we drove North to Caloundra for a two night stay over and look at the local sights...more on that later.

The reunion was good, but sitting at our 5 tables with another 600 guests making a lot of noise was not ideal for a 50 year reunion. At our age some of the folk were in pretty poor shape. We both enjoyed it though. It will never happen again.

The Gold Coast has a reputation of being very tacky, but we didn't see it that way. Sure, the name is tacky, but the infrastructure is huge and there is lots of fun for younger people and those wishing to show off the bod. The hotel was good, with free secure parking and good guest facilities. Friends who also attended the reunion scored a suite in the Q building which at 80 floors is the tallest building in Australia and the world's tallest residential building. They were on the 6th and thought they would take the lift to the top for a view. I wasn't told how much that was but Albert and Kathy decided against it.

From the Gold Coast we headed North to Caloundra. Our SatNav device was absolutely useless in Brisbane City, but sort of worked between places on the road. Joan is the complete navigator and trip planner. I couldn't have easily driven to all the places we visited without her. She was brilliant with the exception of some confusion about left and right. I am good at other things.....I cannot recall what they are/were at this moment but we did manage some fast curvy mountain roads without too much drama.

There are some very nice curvy road in the Glass House Mountains...can't imagine why they are named that? Also in the mountains there are some nice little towns with real country atmosphere. I have noticed that hills suburbs both here and Queensland attract a certain type of people on a Tree Change......Reiki, massage, arts and craft people.

We visited the Australia Zoo. It is very large and takes up a whole day if you attend all the scheduled shows such as the elephant feeding etc. The main arena which looks like it can hold around 5-6000 people had a great show of animal talents with a bit of showtime humour. I was ready to give it a miss when the main 'Ring Master' did the warm up with silly school kids games such as a shout-out competition for the loudest groups internationally and statewise. The birds stole the show and a flight of parakeets zoomed low over the audience at high speed for some time. The 'monster' croc was lured out with some tasty dead rats and he did his duty and leapt for his tucker. We looked at quite a few animals before deciding that Joan was too tired to take any more. The lizard we saw in the Brisbane Art Gallery was also aplenty at Aus Zoo. It seems that it is a Water Dragon and a large one we saw at the zoo was probably around 500mm long. They are seemingly unafraid of humans, even noisy kids who try and grab them. I suppose they are capable of a little disciplinary nip if they are upset.

Pictures later