Far North Fun

My Mum clocked up a pile of frequent flyer points when we toured Africa a couple of years ago. Last year we realised they were about to expire so Mum and I made plans for her visit Sydney for a week. We scheduled the trip to coincide with ANZAC day as its timing this year allowed Garry and I to book in a four-day weekend. Taking time off has become rather challenging now that we're small business owners.

On a whim I decided we should all take an extra day off and spent four nights in Far North Queensland visiting Garry's brother and his family. My Mum was delighted by this idea as it's been almost 25 years since she last visited Port Douglas (which was also my first visit to this popular resort town).

We flew out shortly after lunch on Friday.  Unfortunately Garry had to cancel at the last moment. He'd come down with a shocking dose of flu and decided he was best to rest and recuperate at home. Our tropical excursion coincided with the tail end of the tropical wet season.  However, we got lucky. the few brief showers we experienced didn't hinder our plans. Several days even saw us enjoying extended periods of passing sunshine.

We based ourselves in a spacious holiday home overlooking Six Mile Beach. I'd rented it under the assumption three of us would be travelling.  As a result, Mum and I really found ourselves experiencing a rather luxurious stay.  I also booked us a rental car to give us maximum flexibility.

Our first day was spent driving north as far as Cape Tribulation.  We began the day with a croc-spotting cruise on the Daintree River.  We weren't disappointed.  We saw one huge croc and several smaller baby crocs happily sunning themselves along the muddy river bank.  Mum and I then caught the Daintree Ferry and made our way to the Cape, stopping briefly at Alexandra Lookout to soak in views of the Daintree River mouth.

Cape Tribulation was exactly as I recall. This was my third time there.  The first was also with Mum in 1992. Back then the road was unpaved and could only be safely traversed in a four-wheel drive vehicle. Today it's a comfortably paved road all the way to the cape.  After a rather disappointing lunch and a rainforest boardwalk, we made our way home.

On our way, we dropped into the Daintree Discovery Centre. We had the centre's rainforest canopy walkway and canopy tower climb largely to ourselves for almost an hour. Sadly there were no Cassowaries wandering the forest floor.  However, we did later see a wild Bush Turkey on the roadside.

Our second day was spent experiencing the Agincourt Reef on the Great Barrier Reef.  We caught a Quicksilver tour out to the outer reef.  The company has done a superb job of creating a memorable day. We filled our time with snorkelling, touring the reef in a semi-submersible and viewing the reef from an underwater observatory. I also surprised Mum with a helicopter flight over the stunning ribbon reefs. We were lucky enough to see a couple reef sharks basking in the shallows.  All in all it was an incredible day.

Our third day was spent shopping, dining and generally chilling out.  Mum bought a lovely necklace and I finally found some new swimming shorts that fit me perfectly.  We also ate some of the most delicious salt and pepper calamari we've ever tasted.

Our final day was spent on the Kuranda Skyrail Rainforest Cableway.  We spent a couple relaxing hours wandering the markets in Kuranda and enjoying some truly mouth-watering savoury crepes at a highly recommended market cafe.  It was then off to the airport for an early evening flight home.

Standing in the shadow of Hitler

Owning a toy company involves a few unavoidable commitments.  One of these includes meeting our key suppliers face to face at least once a year.  The annual Spielwarenmesse, or Toy Fair, in Nuremberg provides an ideal opportunity to meet with many of them in a single journey. 

Garry and I made our second pilgrim to the city in early February.  Along the way we stopped briefly in New York to meet with several suppliers who weren’t attending Nuremberg.  Unlike our first trip to this event this year we felt more in control of the experience.  We knew what to expect and were arriving with another year of exceptional results under our belt.

The fair is an incredible event.  It’s the largest trade show for toy industry in the world.  Every year over a period of six days almost 3000 exhibitors from 60 countries present their products. More than 54% of its attendees are international visitors.  The event fills 17 enormous exhibition halls, many of which are dedicated to promoting a single toy genre.

It was an exhausting time.  We met with suppliers every day.  We walked many of its cavernous halls in search of new suppliers.  Our evenings were then filled by suppliers keen to entertain us and facilitate introductions to new industry contacts.  On reflection we’re glad we scheduled our arrival in Nuremberg to include a full day to rest and recover from jet lag before the madness began.

We spent part of our free day visiting some of the city’s famous sights.  Nuremberg has a fascinating history.  It’s been associated with toy manufacturing for more than 600 years which explains why the fair is held here each year.  However, Nuremberg is better known for its place in the Holy Roman Empire.  It’s been called the empire’s unofficial capital as its Imperial Diet (Reichstag) and courts met at Nuremberg Castle.

In more recent times Nuremberg is renowned for its infamous association with the Nazi Germany era. The Nazi Party chose the city to be the site of huge Nazi Party conventions in part to emulate the Holy Roman Empire historical gathering.  These massive conventions, known as the Nuremberg rallies, were held in the city in 1927, 1929 and annually between 1933 and 1938.

Garry and I visited the Dokumentationszentrum (Documentation Centre), a museum that documents the city’s Nazi era.  It’s housed in the north wing of the partly finished Kongresshalle (Congress Hall).  The exhibition is a fascinating exhibit.  We spent several hours there learning more about this extraordinary period of Germany history. 

Afterwards we walked to the nearby Zeppelinfeld, where most of the big Nazi parades, rallies and events took place. It is fronted by a 350m-long grandstand, the Zeppelintribüne, where you can still stand on the very balcony from where Hitler incited the masses. It’s an odd sensation to stand here and recall the dramatic black and movie newsreels that captured these rallies.

We then returned to the old city and spent time wandering the castle grounds, admiring the view across its red tile rooves and exploring the old town’s narrow cobblestone laneways. Unfortunately, we arrived too close to closing time to include a castle tour. We’d hoped to do this last year but soon found our days filled with trade show activities. I guess we'll have to try again next year.  However, we’re glad we made time for a short break as the following days were even more frantic than those in 2016.

Back in DC

Our business trip to New York originally included a stop in Philadelphia to meet with one of our key suppliers.  However, some last-minute changes resulted in them travelling up to New York to meet us.  As a result, we found ourselves with 48 hours to spare while waiting for our transfer flights to Nuremberg.

On a whim Garry and I decided to hire a car and drive to Washington DC for a whirlwind tour.  We left New York about 9:30pm and eventually reached our hotel shortly before 2am.  Garry can now boast of driving through Manhattan at night.  Getting out of the city proved relatively easy. Likewise, Washington DC was equally easy to navigate.

DC was bitterly cold…! After a lazy morning resting from our late-night arrival, we took a walking tour through the Mall.  Our route started at the Lincoln Memorial before finishing with an afternoon at the recently opened National Museum of African American History and Culture.  Along the way, we visited the new Martin Luther King Jr memorial.

Garry and I were last in Washington DC in 2005.  We visited the city while on our way to start our expat adventures in London.  It was wonderful to see visit again.  Washington DC really is a timeless destination.  In many respects it looks no different to my first visit, or this third visit decades later. 

The inauguration of Donald Trump had happened the week before our visit. (We'd watched him depart the White House for the Capitol Building ceremony just prior to boarding a flight from LA to NYC). As a result, many parts of the city were still in the throes of returning to normal.  The massive inauguration platform was still standing in front of the Capitol Building, protest marchers were still crowding the local streets and temporary fencing and media towers were still blocking streets around the White House.

The African American History Museum was a fascinating venue.  I learned a lot about the early slave trading economy and was appalled by the barbaric practices of the slave traders. The museum does a superb job of tracing African American history from its infamous beginning to the history-making inauguration of Barack Obama.  One of the venue’s most memorable places is its room of reflection.  A circular curtain of water falls from the centre of the room while the surrounding walls carry quotes from some the nation’s most celebrated African Americans.

Our final day in the city was spent revisiting the Air & Space Museum, plus a few hours shopping for a winter wardrobe to keep us warm in Nuremberg.  We then retraced our steps back to New York and on to JFK Airport for an evening flight to Europe. For me, the highlight of this airport transfer was another opportunity to drive over the graceful Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

Filling in time between meetings

Garry and I have just completed a business trip to New York.  It’s been almost five years since I was last there and even longer for Garry.  We scheduled our visit to the Big Apple as part of a stopover while en route to the annual toy fair in Nuremberg.  The two suppliers we caught up here weren’t going to be in Germany so we did well to kill two birds with one stone.

Garry was excited to finally see New York in winter.  He was praying for snow while we were there but the best we got was freezing rain.  He was rather miffed when the city subsequently experienced one its biggest snowstorms in more than a decade less shortly after our visit.

In between meetings we also managed to see a few of New York’s famous sights.  We spent Saturday afternoon visiting the Statue of Liberty.  I took my parents out to Liberty Island in 2012 but Garry had never been out there.  We picked a good day to go as the crowds weren’t too bad and the weather was relatively mild on the island.  

We then finished our afternoon with a stroll through the High Line park.  This is clever location.  The park is built over the derelict structure of an abandoned elevated railway.  It weaves its way for more than a dozen blocks along the west side of Manhattan.  It even passes through the middle of several high rise buildings.

We also booked pre-breakfast tour of the new 9/11 Memorial Museum.  This is a private tour conducted before the venue opens to the public.  For almost an hour seven of us, plus a guide, had the entire place to ourselves.  It was very special to experience this poignant place without the bustle of a crowd.

The museum is very well done.  It strikes the perfect balance between recording history and capturing story of individual lives impacted by this tragic event.  We found it very moving.  For me it added another dimension to the events I’d witnessed live on TV from a Hong Kong hotel room all those years ago. 

Perhaps the most extraordinary artifacts are the impact zone pillars.  These mark the location where the hijacked aircraft hit each of the twin towers.  It was astonishing to think that these pillars were ultimately identified from within the mound of debris that smothered the site to a depth of 15 metres or more. However, one of the most spine-chilling images in the museum is that of a lone woman waving for help from the gaping hole that surrounded these mangled pillars.  She did not survive.

During the weekend, Garry and I found time to catch a train up to Greenwich, Connecticut to join my former Text 100 CEO and her family for dinner on Saturday evening. Aedhmar and I haven't seen each other for several years. I was touched that three of her adult children came home especially to see me. It was also my first opportunity to see the amazing renovation Aedhmar has completed since my last visit in 2012. Let's just say we ate too much, drank too much, and enjoyed an unscheduled sleepover on one of her sofas.

Garry and I were also entertained by our suppliers.  Their generosity allowed us to enjoy dinner one evening at a fantastic restaurant and take in a Broadway show.  We saw Josh Groban perform in the Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 at the Imperial Theatre.  We had seats on the stage itself which meant we found ourselves immersed in the drama itself.  It was a wonderful experience.