Solid Gold Coast

The water is warm and soft, walking along Miami beach I can see Surfers Paradise through a blue haze in the far off distance, a range of skyscrapers jutting out into the ocean like a piece of concept art from a science fiction movie. I meet with my relative's who I've not seen in years since I was very young. Auntie, uncle and cousins who live here on the Gold Coast. It's an amazing part of the world. It's weird seeing distant family. I found myself looking for similarities and differences, likenesses and behavior that is shared with close family, even though they live on the opposite side of the globe. I meet wives and extended family. Cousin Scott, smart and organised, puts us up and cooks an awesome bbq. Then cousin Neil, larger than life and looking spookily like my dad but younger and with more hair takes me and Bron surfing. I get several mouthfuls of seawater, Bron keeps falling off, but it's all pretty epic fun. I have surfed and had proper auzzie bbq. Result.

I'm getting used to the camper van we've hired, it's a pretty easy drive. We wave goodbye to the folks and head South to Byron Bay. Many have recommended it, not least by brother who spent a fair bit of time here. It's the most chilled out place you'll ever find and the beach just goes on forever. Whatever the modern word is for hippies is, there are many of them here, folks from all walks of life. We check into a campsite and test out the campervan, which is practical and very cosy. I like it. The campsite here is a bit uptight for my liking, I have romantic notions of of fires on the beach and big BBQ's, but there is Wifi here, which seems non-existant anywhere else, but we are on the most eastern point of the entire continent, so it probably to be expected.

The cider here is fucking great. Really dry and bitter, but with a lovely bite. This is good. Very good indeed.

Finally arrived in Brisbane after a looong series of flights, stopping over Singapore where the airport toilets have a diagram on the wall showing you how to use  them, for any folk who didnt consider sitting down bum first as thier primary option. Arriving early we couldn't get straight into our accomodation, and so took a walk round Brisbane after over 24 hours on the plane with no sleep.

In a shop we notice they have a different coco pops monkey here, and you can buys beans in ham sauce. After the lack of sleep and sitting in darkness it probably wasn't a good idea to have an energising smoothie, which made me go a mental in the head for 10 minutes. I left my sunglasses on the plane and now have some new really stupid looking ones which have metal grater bits in them and look like a doctor who propfrom the 1980's.

They have cider over here,hurray! I've had a bottle of 'dirty  granny' which was lovely,if expensive. Prices are a bit dear, but the maths is easy to do and nearly everything seems to be rounded up to .50 or .00 dollars, noneof your £X.99 illusionof value here.  Looking forward to having a shower, I feel so minging I will probably weigh less after.

John Cooper
Comedian & artist.
2024
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