The Exploratory Trip

I hadn’t thought much about Australia. It was so far away and after all there is plenty to see here in America. But....the more I read, the more I became captivated by the country, it’s history and people. Suddenly it became a place I really wanted to see. And now we had a good excuse. We not only had to have all our questions answered, determine the options we wanted, determine what “stuff” we had to buy that we couldn’t have shipped, look at the boat factory and hopefully “our” boat during construction and do some sightseeing while we were at it.
We scheduled our flight so that we could attend the Santuary Boat Show along the Gold Coast south of Brisbane. The long, long flight was tiring and we lost two days!!! We stopped over at Aukland, thinking that we could see a little of New Zealand from the air, but at 4:30am, it is still dark there.
Arriving in Brisbane, we rented a car since we had planned on traveling a bit during our stay. This was quite an experience - driving on the “proper” a.k.a.”wrong” side of the road. Carol had to keep reminding me, “Stay on the left. No, you are going to hit the curb. Not quite so far.”. Several things come to mind as I think of Brisbane: curvy, narrow streets - many of them one way, no pennies, no tipping, no highway patrols (they have radar and cameras, so everyone follows the speed limit), lots of shops, bakeries, ice cream shops, no homeless people, no trash ($150 fine for a cigarette butt), beautiful people (blue-eyed blonds are all over the place), and generally not very many obese people and they are all sports nuts - everyone.
The factory visit was very comforting. The owner, Richard Ward, opened up the factory and his office to us. After a complete tour of the factory (we even saw our hull completed), and all our questions answered, and a commitment for several more “boat bucks” i.e. thousands of dollars, we flew back home. This time we gained a day and actually landed before we took off - time wise.