2016 Australian Holidays – from the archives

Reading Time: 8 minutes

Quite a surprise to find I had blogged while on holidays back in 2016, but hadn’t published at the time. Actually uploaded two years later on 24/08/2018. Better late than never.

30/06/2016 – Let the holiday begin

This was the day we were to fly to Brisbane to begin our “Summer Holiday” in Australia’s Winter. But first I had to go into work.

Work was ridiculously busy.  It started joyfully enough, knowing I was almost on my way. Though more and more approvals kept me stuck at my desk.

The boys were amazingly good at the airport and on the plane.  Owen thankfully wore himself out at the boarding gate while we were waiting. He was doing a lot of running, along with a fair share of pole dancing.  Within an hour and half he was fast asleep and looking very comfortable.

I found myself quite tired too.  Though when I just began to nod off, a cabin crew would wake me for a drink or dinner.

As I checked out the travel map for our flight, It wasn’t a good sign that my first thought was ‘Is that all!?”

The Singapore Airlines cabin crew were all very friendly. The ladies’ uniform looks almost uncomfortably flattering. Their tiny feminine body seemed to be mostly hips.

Myles was trying to nod off.  And Lewis definitely should have. He spilled orange juice, and dropped a huge pile of skittles all over the floor; and he keeps talking at full volume as if he’s outside the plane sitting on the wing trying to be heard.

Today was my brother’s birthday.  In what has become an annual tradition the boys and I left an Arabic rendition of “Happy Birthday to you” on his voice mail.

One surprising thing, I had to return my duty-free alcohol I bought. It seems only from Terminal 3 there is an arrangement to box the alcohol – needed to enter in Australia. The cashier didn’t know, it was only when he consulted his supervisor that he learned.

 

03/07/2016 – Gold Coast Marathon Day!

I managed a decent amount of sleep on account of Owen needing me to snuggle him in bed.  I still woke up plenty of times.  Once or twice after worrying dreams of missing the event as usual.

The tram to the start line was too packed. Instead I went back to the front of my hotel where charter buses were picking up runners. Lesson-learned.  Don’t pass up a perfectly good transport to try for something more convenient.  On the bus I noticed everyone except a couple of runners had Asics brand running shoes. The more I looked around the more obvious it was. Clearly Dubai has very different market to Australia. I seemed a complete foreigner, perhaps I could have been wearing a grass skirt.

We got to the start line shortly before 6am. Lots of half-marathoners had to rush.

It was quite freezing.  A hot coffee was necessary, and tasted amazing.

My pre-race toilet prep worked a treat.  I felt great from the start. Conditions were absolutely perfect. Crisp to begin, and not getting above warm. I had huge appreciation for all the volunteers and thanked them when I could.  And the spectators were brilliant.  Miyuki from Dubai was running with me, and was hugely popular with the hordes of passionate Japanese passionate Japanese cheers squads.  The Australians had a bit more trouble pronouncing her name from reading it on her bib. I didn’t add a nickname to my bib when registering. I figured it would show my first name instead. Nope, it showed nothing.  So imagine my surprise when a total stranger yelled out “Go Rhino!” It turned out the guy next to me was nicknamed Rhino also. Though people didn’t need to your names for encouragement.

Lots of signs said things like “Go complete stranger” or “I’m so proud of you, perfect stranger”.  There were so many good ones.  I liked the thought behind the image of the Mushroom from Super Mario games, with “Tap here for free power up”. I used as many of those as I could. “Unless you have puked, fainted, or died, keep going!”

One family had the song “We are the champions” playing loudly.  Though instead of those words, they sang “YOU are the champions ..”  The interesting thing with an out and back marathon course is that 20-30 minutes later when we ran back past the same spot they were singing the exact same song. That’s dedication.

I also loved other music along the way, which showcased a variety of bands.  There were two drummers going like crazy. To keep it up seemed to need as much stamina as running 42kms.

My favourite sign of all was in the first kilometre as we ran over the bridge for the first time.  A lady standing there was proudly waving a “You’re nearly there” poster.  As we did pass 1km I did the math and shared we have only 41.2km to go. I’m not sure how well that was appreciated by the runners around me.

In the final stages the going got tough, but I had no worries of finishing.  I just wanted to see the finish line – really wanted to see that line.  (Perhaps the feeling related to my former Gold Coast marathon where I had terrible cramps in the final 200 metres.)

The support heading to the finish was amazing. I particularly like seeing the Indigenous Marathon Foundation (IMF) mob – under the inspirational Rob De Castella.  Under their tent, they all gave such a hearty cheers.  I proudly gave high 5s all round. Even at the finish a lady with a camera obviously from IMF seeing me wearing an IMF shirt decided instead of taking my picture to give me high 5s.

 

04/07/2016 – Dreamworld

We all enjoyed seeing Australia’s premier theme park.  The entry was part of a deal with our accommodation, Paradise Resort. In hindsight, it would have been nice to have invested further and avoided the queues.  We waited 1 hour before doing the Thunder River Rapids ride (tragically, 2 months later that ride would be shut down forever).

We had to wait another hour for the boys who wanted to do Mick Doohan’s Motocross ride.

The Tower Of Terror seemed to have almost a 1 hour wait also, which Lewis and Corey persevered with – which seemed worth it.

05/07/2016 – The rain’s set in

We woke slightly before our breakfast meeting time to learn of a bad weather forecast. It was likely to rain all day so we agreed to drop our plan to visit Movie World. Instead, we decided to go ice skating in the resort we were staying.

All boys had a go. Owen picked it up extremely quickly. Bracken enjoyed it quite nervously – hanging on to the side walls rather than using the penguin-shaped guides. Corey joined us a little later to help Bracken, and he immediately enjoyed it more.

Lewis really put in a lot of effort. And Myles as expected was quite fine.

For lunch we went out for first & chips at the popular Pete’s Fish & Chips near Sea World.

From there we decided to not call it a day and take the Aqua Duck submersible vehicle. It was cool! The car had no suspension, so quite bouncy on the road. But it was amazing to drive into the water. All boys got to drive the boat out at sea which was fun.

For dinner Mum bought stuff to make hot dogs which went down a treat. Lewis may have had 5 or 6. The little boys and the older boys were very tired so we cut short our game of Sequence.

 

06/07/2018 – Helicopter ride and 2nd Dreamworld visit

The helicopter ride from Sea World was busier than I expected. We happened to see Tom Keneally also waiting.

The helicopter journey was more bumpy than I anticipated. The landing was the opposite and very smooth and straight-forward.

From there we went straight to Dreamworld for the rest of the day, where the boys enjoyed new rides and we all checked out the Peter Brock exhibit.

08/07/2016 – Farewell Paradise Resort, and final Dreamworld visit

We had our final morning at the hotel before visiting Dreamworld one last night.

Myles did the Tower Of Terror ride almost reluctantly. He wanted to do it, and not have Lewis just talking about it constantly. Right at the end before we got on, Myles was getting upset and said he didn’t want to do it. The attendants were very helpful and had obviously gone through the routine many times. They assured him after getting his name. Then when that didn’t work the lady said she would slow down the ride for Myles. Myles felt bad having it slowed down for everyone. He didn’t notice the wink she gave me. The story definitely helped. Although Myles looked really freaked out on the ride. Regardless, he enjoyed it. And not wanting to do it again.

Before that we took the train ride to the Corroboree section and saw the native animals. They were awesome, especially the koala which we got to pat,a 4 year old called “Cinnamon”.

The kangaroos weren’t too fussed about us. Boys enjoyed the indigenous exhibit, particularly The Mimis animated story.

We didn’t do many other rides.  The boys preferred to have fun in the Madagascar balls game. Our sons also had fun driving the Model T Fords, like their parents did at probably around the same age.

The Dreamworld Pass was definitely worth it. With three days we got to do a huge amount of the stuff we wanted, and see most of the attractions.

09/07/2016 – Caloundra fishing

Everyone slept like logs after the full week of theme parks and staying at the kids resort.

We had breakfast at mcDonalds as per Myles’s request. It was lovely to have an authentic bacon muffin. After breakfast the boys played in the playground. Well they did, until Myles noticed someone had urinated on the slide.

In the afternoon we went fishing with my brother in the Maroochy River. It took a short while to land our first fish. Naturally Myles caught it. He went on to catch 9 fish altogether. They were mostly bream, only a few legal size.

The stand-out for me was Owen. He was a complete natural. No one had to show him a thing. He just knew how to hold the rod, and wind in the line. And it didn’t take long before he was also trying to cast out the line himself.  It was well-deserved when he caught his first fish!

All in all it was a great day, and night. It’s lovely that we didn’t need to spend a lot of money on theme parks parks and hotel resorts. We can have fun doing such simple activities. I didn’t even need to fish. I enjoyed just watching the others.

13/07/2016 – Extremely white Tassie

We woke around 8am to an unfortunate day of weather, so we cancelled any plans to climb a mountain. Instead we had a great day playing in the snow.

 

16/07/2016 – Flying home to Dubai

Even without looking after three boys, it’s a very long flight from Australia.  Not as long as the couple next to me on the flight, they were coming from New Zealand.  And travelling onto London.  Altogether they’d be sitting on a plane for 36 hours.

We all boarded late due to the plane arriving after schedule.  Then it took maybe more than 30 minutes for the engineers to repair some casing under the wing! At first they couldn’t open it.  Then it took some time.  Then they needed to complete the necessary paperwork.  The captain was nice enough to update us every 10 minutes sharing a lot of details – I’m not sure if we needed all the details.

Our planned flight was to depart at 2210 hours.  Before we boarded they revised the time to 2250.  With the refueling and engineering problems once we were aboard meant we didn’t leave til after midnight!

Despite this, due to good weather conditions we were still scheduled to arrive on-time!  That’s catching up two hours.  You can become curious, Why can’t they travel at that pace all the time.

This was my first QANTAS long haul between Australia and Dubai.  Not bad, though a little pokier in Economy.

The in-flight entertainment was unsurprisingly not up to the mark of Emirates.  With Emirates you get more choices than you need.  QANTAS, for me, have the choices you don’t necessarily want. Obviously the choices weren’t too bad, they lady across the aisle was often laughing out loud in hysterics.

The food was OK. I even enjoyed having a famous Bundaberg ginger beer.

Movie: Van Dieman’s Land

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I just finished watching Van Dieman’s Land. It was terrible.

Elle and I caught a trailer for the film some time ago, which gave the false impression it would be interesting.

And Van Dieman’s Land – AKA Tasmania – being Elle’s home state in Australia, we also thought it’d be nice to see some familiar beautiful scenery and hear some historical accounts.  We were mistaken.

The story tracks the hardships of hardened escapee convicts through the hard Tasmanian wilderness. Then it tracked the hardships of hardened escapee convicts through the hard Tasmanian wilderness.

It was monotonous. Until things got even harder and food become more scarce. So, as you do when in this situation while bush walking through Tasmania, you start knocking off your mates one by one and eating them.  The only piece of suspence was who was next to become stew.

In fact, as there was an absence of any other storyline, perhaps they should have named the flick, “Guys walking through bush, eating each other”.

  • Rating: 0.5/5
  • Tags: Australia, Tasmania, cannibalism

Tassie winter roadtrip

Reading Time: 4 minutes

The weather wasn’t great for the start of our family campervan trip down the East coast, to the South of Tasmania. We’ve been to Tas plenty of times, yet the kids have never seen these areas. Our first stop for the kids to stretch their legs was Avoca – home to perhaps the worlds smallest police station. I’ll share the photo later, the office looked less than 3 metre square. The highlight for Myles and I was being able to warm our bums with the public restroom’s hand dryer. The rain had started, and the temperature was already cold.

On the next stretch of road we saw lots of colours, but they were mostly shades of grey.

People in charge of roads in Dubai should come to Tasmania to learn a thing or two about dealing with water on roads. Altho UAE only deals a week or so of rain each year, the roads flood terribly from a few mils, and it doesn’t disperse for weeks. Here in Tassie we’re experiencing >20 mils and there are seemingly swimming pools and swimming pools of water all over the land. Yet the road seems almost waterproof.

We stopped for pancakes at the famous Mount Elephant Pancake Barn. We risked the $2.20 surcharge for rowdy children they have up on the chalk board. Lady asked where we were headed as the police had called her to advise they were closing the road going back the way we had just gone through. Perhaps the Tassie roads aren’t magical afterall,

Went thru Elephant Pass Rainforest. When I saw a couple of kookaburras fly away I did my best imitation of their famous laughing call. It mustn’t have been good, Myles let me know there are no monkeys in the forest. Although I’m sure my impersonation could be improved, the fact is the boys may not really know about this iconic Australian bird. Lewis even struggles to say it properly, now when we ask what kind of bird it is, he calls it “kookabugger” – which is much funnier.

Day 2 we left for further down the coast.
We spent some time at a kids park at Coles Bay. It had swings and activities which I haven’t seen since 1981. Elle had been going there as a kid – probably since 1981 – and informed me they have all been there unchanged since then.

We went to the jetty where a dog did a wee on our tyre. I think it was showing off, it was so chilly I couldn’t imagine weeing anything but ice.

For a change we had lunch in a pub, the Iluka Tavern. We were one of 6 people in the entire establishment. Their chicken parmy was superb. Loved their sign on the way out, “We encourage people to drink in moderation, PARTICULARLY if you are driving”. Hopefully that kind of encouragement is enough.

We stayed the evening of 09th of August, 2011 in the Mayfield Beach Conservation Park. I mention the date cause it’s significant, it’s the night of the 2011 Australian Census. Although we’ve been living overseas for more than two years, we’ll coincidentally be counted and archived into Australian history. I think it’s sort of interesting that in 100 years, people can learn that we were staying in such a “dwelling” as this campervan at a tiny place on the East coast of Tassie. As a former forms designer I must say I was disappointed with the census form. Ours is completed and sealed, but I remember it didn’t cater for work location for people working overseas, nor did it allow for non-salary workers being on a holiday for Elle. And if I’m being really pedantic, their use of followup questions and not applicability was inconsistent and inefficient. And I’m no authority, but I hadn’t heard of Salvation Army as a religion before Regardless of such issues, we’re recorded though. And it was a bit if fun for Myles. He was quite proud when I told him I recorded the task he performs daily in his job is to talk about gross stuff.

We had the luxury at our camp to make a camp fire. As a Queensland boy, this is a very unexpected activity, it almost felt like something stuck in the days of my childhood. It may also be part of the reason why I struggled. Things were all resolved once we figured out it’s simpler to use almost an entire box of fire lighters rather than the few scraps of kindling we could muster.

The next morning when we woke it was surprising to see the cut up apple we left was untouched, yet Lewis’s spilt satay beef and basmati rice was devoured. I wonder if Mayfield’s possums have been run out of town at the hands of some Asian critters.

Today we saw a few nice natural sights. When walking through the bush at Archers Knob or Devils Kitchen, Lewis was helping Elle in the search for wombats in the little tracks just off the path into the bush. He had no luck – the boys inadvertently made enough noise to make sure of that. However as we were coming to the end of the path, he suggested to Elle that maybe we have a wombat in our van, then even more curiously added – and I quote – “maybe there’s a box of them”. So perhaps Lewis had something other than a wombat in mind.

After a while Lewis tired of nature, saying I don’t like these trees.

We stayed the night at the well-eqipped Port Arthur. The park has always been a popular place – maybe even more popular given the museums raised profile due to the atrocity in 1996.
The manger informed me in the summer the park gets up to 600 guests staying. Now in winter there’s only about 10-15 of us scattered around the campervan area. The manager only took over the place less than 12 months ago, and he said this has been the areas coldest recorded winter since 1968. He didn’t have to explain that to us it was freezing!

Place was scattered with potteroos, wallabies, and many friendly rosellas. The place was seemingly infested with small hopping animals. The manager said there’d be enough wallabies to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools – which provides an interesting visual. The kids liked the animals, although Lewis was selective with the potteroos. He only wanted to feed the ones he decided weren’t bad. He warmed to them all by the end, even sharing his Milo with one of them. This sadly ended with Lewis trying to be helpful by throwing the cup at the poor animal. Once he noticed they were interested in the cup, I had to intervene as Lewis thought it would be a good way to catch one.

All in all, a great trip. Now we just have to go through our few 1000 pix across four cameras. And there could be more tales to share.

Dubai 2020 Olympics feasible?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

There have been many murmerings and insinuations previously, but in the last week it was confirmed at the highest level Dubai has an interest in staging the Olympic Games. Both HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and his wife Princess Haya discussed the point at this year’s SportAccord.

I assume the bid if for the Summer games. While Ski Dubai is the world’s largest indoor snow park and field, it probably still isn’t enough to consider the Winter games. 😉

At this point in time consultants are just going to evaluate the readiness of DXB to host the event, then determine how much work would be required to proceed.

One obvious issue is that during the Olympic month of September the temperature doesn’t get much below 30 degrees celsius.

I saw first hand at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 the amount of infrastructure, development and planning that was required to get the nod. My initial thought around the UAE is that we’re not yet ready. However Sheikh Mohammed is always confident on the city’s ability to rise to the occasion:

“if we decide to make a bid for the Olympics, we will be in it to win”

. There are many examples where UAE has proven itself to be able to carry out the near impossible. Most recently the 808m Burj Khalifa should make people wonder.

One thing’s for sure. If Dubai takes the bid on, I’ll be behind it. And another thing is for certain, if Dubai gets the nod, I’ll need to stay here longer than the 5 years I initially proposed. For anyone that’s been to Dubai it will no doubt be a very interesting story to follow.

Who knows, we could be in with a real chance. It seems Hobart, the capital city of Australia’s tiny island state of Tasmania are considering their chances after a radio prank was a little too successful.

http://www.business24-7.ae/sports/other/dubai-evaluates-olympics-bid-2010-04-26-1.236829

Zen and the art of whitebaiting

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Before coming to Tasmania this trip, I had not been introduced to whitebait fishing, or even this type of fish.  First thing you learn is, fishing is more than just standing around with a rod drinking beer. It really is a sport.  Why else would it be broken into seasons  (Opening of the Whitebait season — IFS Portal  -27 October 2009 – http://www.ifs.tas.gov.au/ifs/opening-of-the-whitebait-season)?

This season, Fred (Elle’s father) had bought an illustrious whitebaiting license. From his daily Facebook status updates of whitebait trials and tribulations, it certainly seemed like an activity I must see.

Unfortunately or probably fortunately, it is an activity non-license holders can only see and not do. To manage the whitebait there are also a host of other restrictions placed upon the dedicated whitebaiter, covering things such as the size and design of the net, how far from the net they must stand, and what colour and fabric underwear is worn.

Fred with net
Fred with net

There are also numerous rules that have been learned over generations and passed down. Don’t cast a shadow on the water, don’t chase the fish, don’t change direction of the net.  We disproved all of these, and managed to bag a quota.

Tasmanian whitebait
Two Tasmanian whitebait magnified about a billion times

It was interesting how much effort is required to catch even just a handful of  these tiny lovettia sealii – which judging by their size they must have the nutritional value of a good belch.

But it’s even more interesting to see the passion and appreciation the humble whitebaiters have for their “sport”. Despite the freezing conditions, and what seems to be huge frustration at the whitebait not doing what they should, these fisherman (and one fisherwoman) are always happy.  The beautiful surroundings have gotta help.

I saw a bumper sticker once that said a bad day at golf is better than a good day at work.  The sentiment surely applies to whitebaiting as well. On the first time we only managed to capture enough little fish for two patties. On the second we got a daily quota – which sort of translates to a jackpot for the gamblers.  But both days were equally enjoyable.