GOOD AS GOLD

Moving the whole family to a new location is never easy. It involves a lot of stress from organizing accomodation, car, shipping the household goods you don't want to part with and parting with a lot of things you can't take with you. It also involves a lot of money (which increases the stress part), but that's a different story.

So we moved from Chicago to the Gold Coast Australia. Another country, another continent. Few friends have since asked me WHY THERE? And this is my attempt to answer that question.

Back in 1989 when I first came to Australia with my Australian wife, we arrived in Melbourne, stayed with her mother for a month or so there, then went to meet her father who lived on a farm few hours inland. Melbourne made a good impression on me, it is a huge city, a bit European in many ways with many nationalities cultivating their culture, but after Hawaii it was simply too cold. And so was the farm, being also exactly the opposite of everything we were used to so far. We bought a used, rusty Ford Falcon station wagon, loaded it and headed North.

Sydney. Much nicer weather, beautiful harbour and endless suburban sprawls with segregated nationalities that didn't seem very welcoming, sorry. Not far from Sydney we stayed in Newcastle to meet another part of the family. I could almost see myself there, the town was the 'right' size, weather was fine, beaches close, but the heart just wasn't there.

We drove further North, another 800 kms or so till we hit the Gold Coast... Well, here it was like the love of first sight! A stretch of modern beach towns for over 30 kms with just about everything you could ask for, except snow perhaps. For me crossing the Southport bridge, seeing the beautiful marina on the right (and I always had a thing for boats), canals everywhere, mountains on the left - did the trick.

I guess not many people have the luxury to choose a place to live like that and I feel very fortunate in this respect, although we were then very poor. Piss poor, as they used to say here. Our rusty Falcon just barely made the trip and for the first few months (yes...) we slept in a tent in a caravan park in Kirra. I am even a bit hesitant to write about it, because some things still hurt after all these years. One thing was sure then: there was no plan B.
I guess the emotions you go through tie you to a place, well... we sure got tied up alright.

Anyway. In choosing the place to live we were not looking for employment opportunities, but rather the living environment 'in toto'.
At the risk of sounding arrogant: do you know how much do the elephants eat every day to maintain their huge bodies? A lot. An arrangement is made for them to find sufficient food which seems very difficult from our point of view. I'm not saying we shouldn't worry about our jobs, but simply making an observation that an arrangement is made for us to have sufficient food and shelter, always.

On the Gold Coast jobs exist because many people from around the world want to come here either on holidays or permanently. Before we left for US 5 years ago, 1000 people were relocating here a week! Sure, not all stayed, but the numbers are huge.

So there, in a nutshell.
And this time around we simply went back to our old stomping ground, good as gold, mate, good as gold.
By the way, there's another place 200 kms North from here, Sunshine Coast. If Gold Coast were my wife, Sunshine Coast wold be the mistress...