Exploring the north coast

And just like that, another summer vacation has come to an end. Garry and I arrived back in Sydney yesterday afternoon following a two-day journey south from Ballina. We broke up the 740km drive with an overnight stop in Port Macquarie. Along the way, we enjoyed a couple of spontaneous pitstops. First, between Ballina and Port Macquarie, we took a detour to visit South West Rocks and the ruins of the nearby Trial Bay Goal.

Trial Bay is a fascinating piece of New South Wales history. In the 19th Century, coastal shipping was the primary means of transport between Brisbane and Sydney. However, the coastal trade proved deadly. Between 1863 and 1866 an incredible 90 ships and 243 lives were lost.  To combat this tally, the NSW Parliament voted to convert Trial Bay into a "harbour of safe refuge" in 1870. Funds were set aside for the construction of a 1500-metre-long breakwater.  

The Trial Bay Goal was constructed to house prisoners who were put to work building the new breakwater.  This was an experimental reform of the state's prison system focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment for the first time. The breakwater proved a disaster.  Work was abandoned within three years of the goal opening, with less than 300 metres of breakwater completed (you can see its remnants in the photo below).  The goal was subsequently closed in 1903.

The abandoned goal was given new life during World War I. The facility was reopened and refurbished as an internment camp for selected leaders of the German Australian community. The camp opened in 1916 before finally closing in July 1918. At its peak, more than 500 men lived here.  

Yesterday, we stopped for an hour or so in Heatherbrae to check out caravans and motorhomes on display at two dealerships. I must admit some models we walked through were very tempting. Maybe our Gray Nomad vision isn’t dead after all? It also helps that our friends Liz and Adam offered to store a caravan on their farm near Ballina anytime we want.

We’ve also spent time touring several seaside towns during our vacation looking at options for a second home. We were keen to explore the local community and review council amenities. We also wanted to see what kind of property you got for your money in each location. Liz and Adam took us on a driving tour of Lennox Head, Skennars Head, and East Ballina. We also enjoyed a leisurely lunch at Husk Distillery inland from Tweed Heads.

On our way to Ballina, we also spent three nights in a serviced apartment on the riverfront in Yamba. This town offered a surprising range of beaches, river parks and other scenic experiences. Garry and I both enjoyed evening and morning walks along the riverfront and onto the coastal breakwater. I’ll let the photos above do the talking.

Garry and I both came away thinking we could settle around Ballina, but we decided that Yamba was still a bit rustic and a bit of a holiday town without much character.  However, the daily pelican parade outside our apartment did give Yamba a small win.

Debt free. Pain free.

2025 is off to an eventful start. Currently, Garry and I are enjoying six nights camped out at the Ramada Hotel & Suites overlooking the Richmond River in Ballina. We’re staying in the same corner suite we booked in January 2021.  In the image below, our room has a balcony with an elevated overhanging roof visible in the top left corner of the building.

The weather has been superb with predominantly fine weather and temperatures approaching 30C. The sunrises and sunsets have been spectacular in equal measure every day. I could get used to this more laid-back lifestyle! Likewise, we're enjoying the boats that come and go along the river - both leisure craft and commercial fishermen.

We celebrated New Year’s Eve with good friends Liz and Adam Benson on their lifestyle block near Alstonville. Our daily highlights included walks along local beaches, swimming in lakes or the sea, and a few afternoon naps. However, there have also been one or two unexpected highlights.  

First, Garry surprised me on 31 December with news that he’d paid the residual balance on his share of the mortgage for our Sydney apartment. That’s right, we finally own our home outright 20 years after buying it. Regular readers will recall that I paid off my share of the mortgage in 2011. We moved into our apartment in April 2004 after making an offer in February of the same year.

We also own our business in full, having paid off our business loan in December 2021. This means that now we own our home we’re essentially debt-free. This milestone was a personal goal I'd always wanted to achieve before turning 60, which I'll do in September this year.

Second, on Saturday, I had an emergency root canal operation. I’d been experiencing some pain the day before that seemed to come right until I attempted to eat dinner at the Federal Hotel in Alstonville. I then spent the night battling a relentless aching rear molar. By morning it was clear I needed urgent dental care. Where do you go at the weekend for reliable world-class dental work in a regional holiday town?

After an internet search, I found what looked like a reputable local dentist in Ballina. I called them at 9:00 a.m. By 10:30 a.m., I was in a dentist's chair undergoing a full 90-minute root canal treatment. However, my research appears to have paid off, as the dentist managing the procedure, Dr Kim Davies, was the founding owner who’d been in business for several decades. She calmly and professionally talked me through the entire procedure.

The dentist discovered that the nerve in my tooth had been dead for some time. Furthermore, there was no sign of infection or anything that would normally cause pain and thus trigger a visit to the emergency room.  In fact, she described my situation as rather unusual.  Somehow I've been walking around for quite some time, possibly years, with a dead tooth.

If the last four days are any indication, then 2025 will be an interesting year!

A final closing note. Today my brothers and I paused to remember the death of my father. He passed away on this day twelve years ago. Here's a link to the memorial tribute I created for his funeral service.

National Lampoon's Vacation

Our annual Summer vacation is off to a shaky start. It’s taken us almost seven hours to travel a distance that normally takes four hours. Traffic crawled (I.e. stopped and started) for the first two hours out of Sydney as the thermometer soared above 43C. Traffic continued grinding to a halt after finally clearing the city thanks to an endless stream of overheated cars and fender benders.

Then, as we hit the highway, the cruise control went haywire and registered a radar fault (we’ve never had that happen before). We turned off the motorway to wash the car and hopefully reset its radar sensors.

However, as we drove into the automated car wash machine it suddenly stopped and a fatal system error flashed on the activation screen. With cars queued behind us we were trapped inside until the staff came to our rescue. Fortunately, our delayed car wash did successfully fixed the cruise control.

My iPhone then decided to have a meltdown. It started dropping calls, stopped connecting to the network, froze mid-search, and threw up blank screens. Multiple resets over 45 minutes eventually resolved the issue and Google Maps was back in action.

We finally reached our riverside hotel, a scenic overnight pitstop, shortly after 7pm only to find reception closed. They’d left keycards for our room. However, neither card worked in the door. Multiple dropped calls to an after hours number finally resulted in a staff member arriving to let us into our room.

Given such a hectic day we headed for the local pub to enjoy a quiet drink and a bite to eat. As we walked in the staff kindly advised us of a 90 minute wait for food. We sat outside and consoled ourselves with a cold beer only to have a passing shower curtail our efforts.

We’re hoping tomorrow’s drive to our final destination doesn’t follow in the footsteps of that classic movie, National Lampoon's Vacation. It’s spawned at least five sequels. As we wait for our meals, we’re finally decompressing thanks to a truly spectacular sunset over the Harrington River. It’s a wonderful deja vu moment as this post will testify.

UPDATE: 28 December

Delighted to report today’s four hour drive was 100 percent incident free. Along the way we stopped for wander along the headlands at Tacking Point. This evening we’re enjoying a cold beer overlooking the Clarence River in Yamba.

UPDATE: 30 December

I forgot to mention that our day was already off to a rocky start on 27 December before we’d even left home. We discovered flies had been through the kitchen garbage bin overnight. As a result, we were greeted by maggots crawling through the kitchen on the morning of our departure. We spent an hour clearing the infestation before finally packing our bags.

A family Christmas

That's Christmas done and dusted for another year.  This year Garry and I stayed overnight at Nicole and Jason's house in Rouse Hill on Christmas Eve. We spent the evening at a family cocktail function hosted by Garry's niece, Zoe, and her partner Ben. They've just bought a house together near South Windsor.

Zoe and Ben did a superb job hosting 14 rowdy family members. Their new home is very impressive —it's modern, airy and laid out efficiently with a small backyard. They've done incredibly well as first-home buyers.

Nicole and Jason, Garry's sister and brother-in-law, hosted Christmas Day. We four adults kicked off the day with a breakfast of ham and cheese croissants, washed down by refreshing Moet Mimosas. The family arrived shortly before noon for present unwrapping, followed by a traditional Christmas roast lunch mid-afternoon.  The kids then spent several hours frolicking in the pool as the temperature hit a high of 32C.

Garry and I finally departed Rouse Hill around 8:00pm. As expected, there were a few moments during the day when a family member shed a few tears in memory of Rhonda.

This afternoon Garry and I are off to spend Boxing Day with friends in the building next door. It's a Leftovers BBQ where we come together and polish off the last of our collective Christmas food.  Garry and I are keen to clear the fridge as we'll be heading North tomorrow for two weeks to explore the Northern Rivers region.

Silly Season antics

We've completed another year of silly season antics. I honestly can’t recall such a full diary of events and invites in the countdown to Christmas. This year's party highlights started with a long lunch hosted by EO's Sydney Chapter at Taronga Zoo on 29 November. Here, we enjoyed a stunning sweeping floor-to-ceiling panorama of Sydney Harbour despite heavy rain most of the afternoon.  

A few days later, lunch was followed by an overnight excursion to Robertson in the Southern Highlights, about two hours south of Sydney.  Garry and I were there to celebrate the wedding of one of our staff at the heritage-listed Robertson Hotel. The service was an outdoor event that ultimately tested the limit for those wearing suits in the blazing Summer sun.  

On the way to Robertson, we stopped for lunch at the Press Shop cafe in Bowral. We both tried the pulled lamb salad on a beetroot hummus base. It was stunning.  So much so, that we revived the recipe for a Christmas party we hosted on our apartment balcony a week later. A dozen people joined us for a lengthy cocktail and finger food experience on our rooftop balcony before retreating indoors for dessert.

We've also hosted a leisurely lunch for staff and contractors at Mimi's in the Coogee Pavillon on 13 December. It's our third staff event there. Garry is somewhat infatuated with the venue. Afterwards, Garry, Mitch and I made our way to Bar Cleveland, up the road from our office. We encountered a group of friends at an outdoor table. We were joined by a long-standing, reputable champagne journalist who convinced each of us to order a bottle of champagne and embark upon a lengthy "tasting session". The rest as they say is history!

The following day, our apartment building hosted its annual resident Christmas BBQ. We made it down to the courtyard for a couple of hours to catch up with our neighbours, including Mark and Sue, who’d invited us for a festive lunch in their courtyard the previous weekend. 

We finished up our silly season antics on Thursday this week with my EO Forum's annual Christmas event. As the evening's organiser, I arranged a private seaplane scenic flight around Sydney Harbour followed by a leisurely banquet on the outdoor deck at The Empire Lounge. Our flight departure was delayed 15 minutes while waiting for one of our traffic-ensnared partners to arrive.  This resulted in some truly spectacular evening sunset images of the city's iconic bridge, one of which opens this post.

The flight took out from Rose Bay towards Manly, then through the heads and along the coast as far south as Bondi and Tamarama beaches. We then returned through the heads and made our way back up the harbour for a couple of dramatic sweeping turns in front of the bridge and opera house.

Last night we kicked off the first of three family events. We enjoyed a cocktail evening with all of Garry's cousins and their partners in Pitt Town.  We'll then repeat the cocktail experience on Christmas Eve with Zoe and Ben at their new home, before enjoying Christmas Day at Garry's sister's house.  We'll be well and truly ready for our two-week road trip to the Northern Rivers region starting 27 December.

More Kodak classics

It's been five months since my last Kodak-era update. Regular blog readers will recall my long-term project to retrospectively publish posts on travel adventures enjoyed before this blog began. Since the last update, I've been hard at work capturing the following memories for posterity.

• Exploring Japan during the height of the Sakura season.
  
  
• A day trip to Kamakura, one of Japan's ancient capitals.
  
  
• My first road trip through the Outback, including time on the Murray River.
  
  
• A spontaneous vacation in Perth, my first visit to West Australia.

• Finally, I’ve added a new post about our first time in Boston in 2005.

Next on my shortlist are posts about my first time in Seattle and San Francisco, along with more about the round-the-world ticket booked to attend my brother's wedding in 1996. The image opening this post was taken during this trip. I've already captured my initial stopover in Southern Africa. In the months ahead, watch for posts exploring Prague and Berlin with my parents, followed by a wild time with friends in Hawaii. 

Go west young man

My first time in Perth was a spontaneous affair. In August 1991, IBM made me redundant. At the time, I was on a 12-month contract tasked with managing office supplies in the company's Kent Street tower. This building housed IBM’s Sydney-based industry sales teams. It's long since been converted into luxury apartments and renamed Observatory Tower.

My role involved ordering stationery, clearing photocopier paper jams, replacing fax machine thermal rolls and delivering mail to individual mail slots on each floor (these were the days when people still sent internal memos in yellow manilla envelopes sealed with string). My desk on the 18th floor was blessed with a panoramic view over Circular Quay and the Opera House, while windows at the opposite end of the floor delivered unrivalled views of the Harbour Bridge. As a recently settled migrant, it was a breathtaking introduction to Sydney and its magnificent harbour.

In 1990-91, Australia was weathering “the recession we had to have.” Globally, IBM lost USD2.83 billion in 1991. At the time, this was one of the largest corporate losses in American history, while the Australian operation was its worst-performing subsidiary. I recall sitting in a sales meeting watching managers white-boarding missed sales targets at an alarming rate. Until then, the Australian subsidiary had always reported stable year-on-year growth.

Months earlier, IBM Australia had celebrated a record increase in sales to AUD1.7 billion and an after-tax profit of $135 million. The once-unstoppable subsidiary subsequently announced losses of more than $300 million in 1991, following a staggering 30% drop in revenue, to about $1.2 billion. Understandably, my contract was terminated early. Although, to my surprise, IBM paid out its full residual value, giving me the equivalent of an additional eight weeks' pay. For the first time in years, I actually had a wad of cash in the bank.

This is the first and only time I’ve ever been made redundant. I recall collecting my final paycheck from the mailroom on a Friday evening. On a whim, I walked over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to clear my head, then caught the train home from Milson’s Point. 

As the sun loomed low in the sky, I reflected on the harsh reality of finding work amid an increasingly dire recession. I needed to decide my fate. Would I stay in Australia, having arrived just nine months earlier? Or was it time to throw in the towel and return to New Zealand? I recall vividly how vulnerable I felt. 

I needn’t have worried. My time at IBM reflected positively on me and my resume. Within a week, I’d secure a job as a desktop researcher at International Data Corporation (IDC), a reputable industry analyst firm. It confirmed my appointment on a Wednesday morning with a start date of the following Monday. I decided to use the intervening period to go travelling. Otherwise, it’d be 18 months or more since finishing my travels in Europe before I’d have time off again.

I walked into a local travel agency and told them I had five days of leave to fill. Where could I go? Could I schedule a travel option that maximises my time away? Within an hour, we’d booked me on an afternoon flight to Perth, returning overnight on Sunday, arriving in Sydney early Monday morning, ready to start work. I returned home, packed my bag, updated my flatmates and headed for the airport. By Wednesday evening, I was checking into a hostel in Perth. 

I spent the next five days exploring the best the city had to offer. I caught a one-way ferry cruise down the Swan River to Fremantle and spent an afternoon exploring this pioneering seaside town. This was just a few years after Australia had won the America’s Cup, so the port area had been completely rejuvenated.  Along the way, I ticked off its colonial highlights, including the Round House, a 19th-century prison, and the nearby Whalers Tunnel. 

I also took a cruise upriver to the Houghton winery, where I discovered the delights of its Tawny Port. I recall guests participated in a wine tasting as we cruised, followed by lunch and a further tasting at the winery’s riverside cellar door. It would be fair to say that we returned to the city a little worse for wear.

Keen to see as much as possible, I hired a car and drove up to the Pinnacles at Nambung National Park. This incredible natural phenomenon lies about 190km or 2.5 hours north of Perth. The Pinnacles are amazing natural limestone structures, formed approximately 25,000 to 30,000 years ago after the sea receded, leaving calcium-based seashell deposits. Over time, coastal winds removed the surrounding sand, leaving the pillars exposed to the elements. The resulting pinnacles range in height and dimension - some stand as high as 3.5 metres.

Back then, you could drive around these towering structures by following a designated touring route. I recall taking photos of them, and my car was dwarfed by more than one impressive pinnacle. I also drove to the coast near Cervantes to check out the area’s soaring white sand dunes. On my way home, I visited the renowned Scarborough Beach to watch the sun set over the Indian Ocean. It was a truly memorable day trip.

I also spent time exploring Kings Park and taking in its iconic view of Perth Water, a wide, sweeping inland bay on the Swan River in central Perth. It’s the scene that opens this blog post. As for other sights in Perth, I’m unsure what else I saw on that trip. For example, did I visit the Perth Mint? I imagine I did, as back then I always tried to tick off every major tourist sight listed for any location I visited.

The overnight flight to Sydney was uneventful and all too brief. I recall shaving in the airport bathroom in Sydney and changing into my smart casual work clothes before heading to North Sydney. This was the start of what ultimately became a 21-year career in the technology industry. I've been back to Perth at least twice since, once in 2009 and again for business in March 2014.

NOTE: 3 December

I’ve yet to find any photos I took during this trip other than the image that opens this post.  For now, I’ve illustrated it with pictures taken from the web.

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.

Friends for life

Garry and I joined two long-standing friends, Jon and Colm, for dinner last night. We kicked off the evening with cocktails at Bobbie’s, a new subterranean bar in Double Bay before venturing upstairs for dinner at Neil Perry’s new Cantonese restaurant, Song Bird.

We last caught up as a quartet in July 2022, and before that, we enjoyed leisurely Sunday cocktails at the Beresford Hotel in 2019. However, we’ve had a couple of meals alone with Jon in the intervening years. Garry and I entertained Jon at Margaret, Neil Perry’s flagship restaurant, earlier this year, and an evening at Rockpool in Melbourne last year.

Our meal in 2022 was a leisurely lunch at Nour, followed by cocktails at the Dolphin Hotel. Jon succinctly describes this post-COVID reunion as “The best seven-hour lunch we’ve ever enjoyed”. Nour really was awesome. The restaurant gave us a large circular table next to full-length picture windows overlooking its rear garden wall. Above is us at the Dolphin.

Jon has the dubious distinction of being one of my longest-standing friendships in Australia. More than 30 years ago we met at a mutual friend’s housewarming party. Since then, our friendship has endured through good times and bad. Along the way, we’ve always been there for each other as we’ve battled some of our darkest moments, met our respective partners, got married (Jon and Colm in December 2002) and relocated across the globe (Garry and I to London, Jon and Colm to Vancouver).

Jon has taught me much about life. For example, his friendship helped me understand my mother’s personality and what she valued most. He’s also taught me true friendship is often an endurance race, not a sprint. I've learned that factors sustaining the relationship morph and evolve over time. Here's to many more decades of growing older together.