Departure to the Gold Coast (Jan. 9)

(View from our balcony with the ocean in the distance)

If there’s one thing I discovered on our travels from Sydney to the Gold Coast, it’s that an Australian accent can be extremely difficult to understand, especially when it’s coming over the intercom in the airport and talking about some kind of emergency on the landing strip. But as we all sat at our gate in the Sydney airport and they mumbled something about an emergency and announced that all flights were delayed until further notice, it became clear that this journey was going to be anything but routine. We never actually found out what had happened on the tarmac, but when we were on the plane our pilot told us about a mechanical issue that they’d had with the plane, apparently another reason for the delay.

Flying into Brisbane was surreal. It looked like a third world country with a largely uninhabited coastline, with little more than smoke-billowing factories. It was a stark contrast from our arrival in Sydney. Eventually we landed and got all the luggage sorted out and headed out on the bus to the Gold Coast. It was surprisingly gray out and it actually started to rain as we gathered our luggage and headed up to our new home, The Meriton at Broadbeach.