Lunch sponsored by Jetstar

Retirement rules can be challenging. Garry and I are still getting used to booking activities without scheduling them around weekends, public holidays and commercial obligations. In other words, we can book an activity any day of the week, at any time that suits us, or that secures the best deal. Yesterday I did just that.

A few weeks ago, while visiting my brothers in New Zealand, I decided to join my brother Matt for a birthday lunch while he and Shelley were holidaying on the Gold Coast. I booked flights there and back for $112.00 via Jetstar. You read that correctly: $56.00 each way. I subsidised this price a little by cashing in the frequent flyer points I’d clocked up flying to New Zealand. I was also travelling with nothing more than carry-on luggage.

My flight landed on the Gold Coast shortly after 9:00am. By 10:00am I was pulling up outside the entrance to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. Matt, Shelley and I then spent the morning checking out some of Australia’s iconic native animals. Avid followers of this blog may recall that I visited this attraction in November 2024 as part of a business networking event.

At the time, I got to hold a koala. The park has since stopped this practice. These days, visitors can only book a photo standing next to a koala on a tree branch. Yesterday we decided to forgo the photo opportunity. However, we weren’t disappointed. The koalas were out in full force, especially in the nursery section. The baby koalas delighted us with their antics.

We did enjoy one close encounter. In the Kangaroo zone, we were invited to stroke a few of the friendly marsupials. Matt was delighted. We also spotted a very young joey nervously popping its head out of its mother’s pouch. Super cute!

Once we’d had our fill of marsupials, snakes and birdlife, it was a short five-minute walk to the coast. The Swell festival was in full swing. This is the Gold Coast’s equivalent of Sydney’s Sculpture by the Sea event. We spent an hour exploring the artwork installed along the coastal boardwalk. We then retired to the Currumbin Beach Vikings Surf Life Saving Club for a leisurely lunch overlooking the beach, with the iconic Surfers Paradise skyline in the distance.

We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying Happy Hour at the Burleigh Pavilion. Queue more white sand beaches and pounding surf as we sat by the window drinking cocktails. We finished my day trip with wine and nibbles at Matt and Shelley's holiday accommodation, just across the road from the Pavilion. I then took an Uber back to the airport and was back home shortly after 10:30pm.

It was awesome fun hanging out with my little bro and his wife. I'm glad I took the opportunity to celebrate his Double Five birthday. That’s $112 well spent if you ask me. I could get used to retirement.

Marsupial moments

I’ve just returned from my EO Forum’s annual overnight mini-retreat. Regular readers will recall that last year the group flew a hot air balloon in Melbourne, and visited Canberra in 2022. This year we stayed overnight on the Gold Coast.

I organised this year’s mini-retreat. As always, I was determined to deliver a memorable event. You’ll recall I organised our main annual retreat in Wellington in March last year. As I’ve blogged before, EO is big on developing the “whole person”. As a result, a great retreat needs to include people presenting on commercial topics, as well as people offering unique, or eclectic, perspectives on life. We also try to schedule a “once in a lifetime” experience.

This year I booked us into spectacular Sky Apartments at Peppers Broadbeach. Here we hosted a presentation by an old friend, Liz, who transformed her business from a physical operation employing more than 40 people to an entirely virtual organization that doesn’t maintain a single physical office.

Later that evening her husband, Adam, joined us to share his experience running their company, as well as inspiring the team with stories about their tree-change lifestyle living on a hobby farm near Ballina. Garry and I will be spending four days with them after Christmas.

We then spent Thursday afternoon at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary where we touched and held a koala while enjoying beer and wine with a light charcuterie board. The photos we received were spectacular. This is the first time I’ve ever held a koala. They’re heavier than they look! The little fella I held was at least 10kg or more.

Many years ago I got a few photos of me with koalas in the wild. It was Easter 1990. Three of us drove to Portland to spend the long weekend with a friend, Dean, on his family farm. While there we ventured out to nearby Mount Richmond National Park in search of koalas. We eventually came across one high in a tree. We climbed the tree and briefly touched it. However, if truth be told, the poor animal kept climbing to the tree's highest point to escape us. 

We subsequently encountered a second animal sitting half along a sturdy horizontally extended tree limb devoid of vegetation. The koala was very subdued. One at a time, we gingerly shuffled out onto the limb, sat next to it, put our arm around it briefly, took photos, and left it in peace. In hindsight, the animal was probably deeply unwell, or near death, as its exposed location, lack of fear and immobility were very abnormal.

We finished our afternoon on the Gold Coast with leisurely drinks on the outdoor patio at Burleigh Pavillon. Our corner table overlooked the arcing white sands of Burleigh Beach. We then relocated for dinner in a private dining space at Social Eating in Broadbeach. Garry and I ate there when we visited the Gold Coast last year.  Although the food this time wasn't as impressive.

We held our normal monthly business review meeting on Friday morning, followed by a leisurely lunch at Miss Moneypenny, a local institution. I ordered the truffle and mushroom risotto, which was mouth-wateringly good. Then, it was straight to the airport for our flight home.

Yesterday’s weather in Queensland was horrendous. The rain absolutely bucketed down. More than once the minivan taking us to the airport had to gingerly weave its way around or through localized flooding. Flights were also chronically delayed. Although, by sheer luck, our Jetstar flight was on time. All this was in stark contrast to the glorious weather we enjoyed flying in and out of Sydney.

However, everything I hate about Jetstar was borne out by my experience at the boarding gate. They weighed my hand luggage, declared it 4kg overweight and promptly hit me up for a $75 “gate upgrade charge”. Had I checked in my bag they'd have charged me nothing. Same bag, same weight, but loaded differently on the aircraft.

As the years pass, my love for Qantas slowly erodes. Year after year the airline quietly eliminates or downgrades benefits for Platinum frequent flyers while maintaining a Machiavellian Chinese Wall between its full-service airline and budget offshoot.

It’s happy to consolidate Jetstar’s performance as part of its annual results, while completely negating any frequent flyer benefits for Platinum members by declaring Jetstar “another airline”.  For example, my booking - completed on the Qantas website - included a Qantas-branded flight to the Gold Coast. This wouldn’t gall me as much if it wasn’t simultaneously pulling Qantas-branded aircraft off routes and replacing them with Jetstar alternatives.