Gold Coast Adventure Sue's Birthday

It was Sue's Birthday so we decided we'd venture to Queensland and the Gold Coast. We were staying in Broadbeach south of the infamous Surfer's Paradise. Our apartment had a view of the Pacific Ocean.

Our first night meant going to the Outback Spectacular which I wasn't too sure about but turned out to be really great fun. Impressive horsemanship, equally impressive food service with the main course being served to around 1000 of us in about 7 minutes. This also happens to be the duration of "The Man from Snowy River" a classic poem from Banjo Paterson that was recited during the food service [a little aside is that he is an old boy of Sydney Grammar, some where I was fortunate to visit just a couple of weeks later]. Just in case you were thinking, who's he, well he's the poet that wrote Waltzing Matilda.

We were all given hats on entry to the Outback and here you can see Harry after being picked to do the Pig Chasing with a couple of other kids.

The next day was Sue's birthday. We started with a trip to Sea World.

After the Dolphins it was on to the thrill rides.

And then on to see this fab Turtle.

Sea World is also where a national kids TV show is produced, called Toasted, so we sat and watched it being filmed for a while.

In the evening we had a slap up meal at the Kurrawa Surf Club along side the beach. You cannot fault the quantity of food that is produced and quite delicious too.

Someone might have being playing on the playground later that night.....

Harry Skiing

This is Harry coming down the last little bit of the Summit



And this is Sue, see if you can see where she appears from.

Hotham Ski Weekend

Just got back from a great weekend in Hotham. It's about 5 hours drive from Melbourne and offers skiing for a range of abilities. Which is lucky given my inability to ski. Sue and I have both been skiing before but a very long time ago and I know that I really had no ability what so ever.

So when the opportunity to go skiing with a few work friends came up we thought it would be good fun to give it a go. The other 6 people in our party are relatively accomplished so after we arrived and got skis and things me, Sue and Harry had a lesson. It was great and after 90 minutes we were all a bit shaky but just about able to snow plough turn.

The run in the picture is a green run that comes down from the summit of the mountain. So on day 2 we set our sights on conquering the summit. As Harry still needed a bit more confidence for this we got Natalie to give him a slightly more advanced lesson for 1 hour. Sue and I had a coffee while we waited for him. By the time we caught up with him Natalie declare he was a natural and good to go on a blue run. Excellent for harry not so good for Sue and I. While we were having coffee Harry had done the summit twice. So he showed us how it was done. I'll post a bit of video soon.

The following day Chris, Sid, Matt, Damo, Nathan and Minette took Harry (and Sue) under their wing and and took him on a blue run. So we all managed to have a fantastic time, I got to the summit and down in one piece, Sue and Harry did blue runs. But proud Dad here as Harry really went from not being able to ski at all to doing a blue run in 2 1/2 hours. Not bad for a little chap.