The Great Gold Coast Millenium Riots
------------------------------------

This document was written by Paul Edwards and is released to
the public domain.


On 1999-12-26 we woke up at the ungodly, immoral and downright
maniacal hour of 5:30am.  Raymond arrived at 7am as scheduled.
We then headed to an innocuous street in Pymble, to meet with 
Michael.  We both arrived at the Pymble backwaters at about
7:50am, 10 minutes ahead of schedule, Michael beating us
slightly.  There was a bit of confusion with the phones, as I
tried ringing their mobile at about 7:30am to make sure they
were on schedule, only to be told the phone was out of range
or switched off, less than a minute before Ann rang me to say
they were on schedule and that their phone was definitely
switched on and almost definitely within range.  I almost
rang the phone company to let them know that the woman who
reckons that Ann's phone was switched off or out of range should
check her facts before coming to such a ridiculous conclusion.

So Michael's car consisted of Michael, Ann, their son Kevin,
and Ann's mother, "Hong Kong Aunt".  I wonder what she would
have been called if she didn't have a sister with kids?  Our
car consisted of my brother-in-law, Raymond, the driver, his 
father, Mr Zhong, mother, "Mrs Zhong" (for sake of 
Anglicisation, even though they don't do that in China), 
myself ("South Queensland Paul"), and my wife, Xiayi.

We were embarking on an epic journey, I was mainly going along
so that I could "see it to believe it", as I didn't believe
people could actually go to tourist destinations at the "last
minute" and either find a place to stay or survive more than
about 5 minutes before being trampled to death by American
and Japanese tourists.  I'm the sort of person who's more
comfortable going to tourist destinations in the winter,
when it's raining, and just after a hurricane, in the hope
that the crowds might have thinned a bit.  And even then I
travel to the less trampled tourist destinations, such as
the Selafield Nuclear Reprocessing Facility.

Anyway, we were the lead car, and I had failed to remember
to obtain some walkie-talkies, which meant if we separated,
or otherwise wished to make on-the-fly decisions, I'd have 
to use the more expensive mobile phone option.  No-one else
shared my enthusiasm for an elaborate semaphore mechanism 
resulting in a complex binary message, for reasons I couldn't
quite catch.

I was in charge of navigation, but whilst I was still trying
to figure out whether I should chance my enviable reputation
as a navigator on that strange green line, instead of the
trusted red line of Pacific Highway (how hard can it be to
get that wrong?), Raymond was turning off Pacific Highway
onto what turned out to be the Newcastle Freeway.  It might
just work.

He then appeared to do his darndest to lose Michael, darting
in and out of traffic at high speed on a double demerits
weekend.  The thing I love about double demerits is the way
your workmates will come up to you very seriously and warn
you to be careful on the roads, as it's a double demerits
weekend, ie double the points and double the fine.  I've
never once had anyone warn me to be careful on the roads
because 2000 people died last year.  Thanks, guys!

The NRMA maps were interesting, as they had degrees latitude
and longitude on them, so I was quite easily able to tell my
approximate position, and the impending doom of a road change.
I marked a shitload of exits along the trip, in case I ever
wanted to go to those places again.  At the end of the
Newcastle Freeway (JF3PAC) a complex sequence of roads managed
to get us onto the Pacific Highway, and even going in the
right direction, which I was quite proud of, and makes a nice
change from the usual either/or situation.

Petrol prices got relatively steep out of Sydney, climbing
from 78.9 to 80.9.  We held out until Taree, with the car
almost empty.  Ended up having to pay 82.9 after all that.
It was around then that I decided to start marking cheaper 
petrol stations on the way up, to hopefully get them on the 
way back.  In Taree I successfully found the hotel we would
be staying in on the way back, and took the location.  Of
course they didn't know their location beforehand, nor did
they even have a street directory with UTM grid references.

Michael wanted to have a quick detour to Port Macquarie,
apparently he'd had a dream that there was more seafood
lying on the beach that any mortal man could eat, which
reminded me of Homer Simpson's "new life under the sea".
Unfortunately I also had visions of me being the person
who failed to navigate to the said legendary beach.

So I decided we should stop at McDonald's (PMMACD) on the
way, obstensibly as an entree to the beach fest.  I pointed
out that there was a choice of beaches, did Michael's vision
happen to mention the name?  Of course not, so I decided to
try "Shelly Beach", because at least if there was a lot of
shells there, it would look like we had just turned up late
to the party, not that I had loused up the navigation.

So I was holding out for Shelly Beach, and after a quick
misguided (UNguided actually Raymond!) tour of Nobbys Beach
(NOBBYB), we arrived at the Holy Grail, where we could once
again be fishers of men.  Or at least small sea creatures.
After explaining at length what "shelly" meant, and that this
really was the best seafood Port Macquarie had to offer, the
group started monster-hunting.  As it turned out, as soon as
we stepped onto the beach, we found a large pile of sea shells,
almost as if they'd all decided to beach themselves in a
ritual suicide rather than be barbequed by us.  It turned out
that I was the only one who thought that collecting shells
from the beach meant more than plundering others' leftovers,
the rest of them seemed quite happy to have collected those
ones.

It was about this time that I realised I had left the brand
new bottle of sunscreen lotion in the car that I had left
at home, so scavenged some off Mrs Zhong.  As usual, there's
always one spot that I manage to miss, this time the back
of my knees turned red in the ten minutes I spent there.  I
don't know why I bother with daylight really, I was quite
obviously a bat in my previous life.

I attempted successfully to rejoin Pacific Highway by taking
some of the lesser-known routes, with no less than 5 cows
injured in the process.  A couple of hours later and we
arrived in Coffs Harbour.  Of course, there was the
obligatory sign which lured us with "wharf this way" (which
implied Ocean Parade was probably there too), and so the 
directions that these people always give you are once again 
totally useless.  However, the tourist cartoon I was using
for navigation ended up being sufficient for us to get onto
Ocean Parade, and eventually to our hotel, Sandcastles
(SANDCS).

Even then, the signs were so bad, that we managed to go to
the hotel next door, before being sent packing.  We checked
in and I gave the hotel owner their GPS location, which
they didn't seem to think was particularly useful given
that they had already found the place, hell, they even
owned it.

Michael chose key 29, so we got 30.  After settling in, we
went for a wander down to the nearby beach.  Our car then
decided to go to a Thai Restaurant near the Pier Hotel (PIERHT).
I have long since stopped asking questions like why do we
travel hundreds of kilometres to outback Australia so that we
can experience tradition outback Australian Thai Restaurants.
When we came back, we went next door and agreed that we'd go
fishing with Michael from the nearby bridge.  I'm not sure
who we were waiting on, but whilst we were waiting, I started
chatting to Hong Kong Aunt about what exactly she had learnt
from the farmers.

This conversation managed to bore most of the people out of
Michael's apartment and into ours, leaving me with Ann,
Hong Kong Aunt and Mrs Zhong.  It was most certainly an
interesting experience attempting to communicate with people
who've never heard of Confucious, the Cultural Revolution,
and various other things I expected them to have noticed,
having come from China.  In my experience, most Chinese
people don't even know what Chinese Water Torture is.  Yet
there's not a westerner alive who doesn't know.  The same
as every single saying in the western world is always
attributable to Confucious.  It is considered downright
rude to put your own name to a saying.  

Anyway, the electronic and printed dictionary for some reason 
didn't seem to successfully translate very many things, but 
I've found from past experience that I have much warmer
relationships with people who don't speak the same language
as me.  I even tried speaking Chinese, but they couldn't
even understand "disect tow" (big rock, with "tow" as in
"towel"), despite my saying it so close to perfect Cantonese 
that even my mother couldn't tell the difference.  And the 
old excuse "we thought you were saying something in English" 
was totally and utterly dispelled in advance.  And despite 
the fact that I yelled it in 5 different octaves, to make sure 
every variation was covered (to those of you not familiar 
with Chinese, there's only about 10 different sounds used 
in Chinese, you get all the words by yelling them at different 
pitches until the person you are speaking to either acknowledges 
understanding, goes deaf, or the neighbours bang on your door,
whichever happens first).

One thing I did notice whilst we were talking was that some
arsehole was using a jackhammer in the front yard.  It's
quite unbelievable really.  It's hard enough to get someone
to work on a public holiday at all, nevermind doing
jackhammering at night.  Still, this was Fawlty Towers.  A
little later Xiayi came in to inform me that Basil had just
come to inform her to please stop jackhammering, the
neighbours upstairs were complaining about us, because they
were already asleep.

Yegads!  It turns out that our unit had been taking showers
during this time, and one after another, 3 of them had
put the shower on, only to have it make a TREMENDOUS racket.
Some form of water-knock.  And because of this, our unit
had been blackbanned from having showers after 9pm and before
8am.  With a checkout time of 9am.  When I normally take half
an hour to have a shower, and normally give 10 minutes leeway
to any times to cater for watch discrepancies.  Meaning the
other 4 would only have 10 minutes between them for their
morning shower, and the 4th person wouldn't have even got the
full 2.5 minutes, since they had to get out of the shower and
to reception in that time too.

All this of course leaves aside the vexing question of why
they didn't fix the shower instead of introducing on-the-spot
curfews.  And the other vexing question too.  I mean, I'm not
the world's greatest party animal, hell, I'm the world's
greatest unparty animal, carrying an unfestive atmosphere
with me.  But just what sort of party-pooping, stuck up old
wenches go to sleep at 9pm when on holiday and touring, and
actually go and dob us into the Fawlty Management, when as
far as I am aware even the cops give us 7am-11pm to be noisy.
It's not like we were jackhammering their apartment or
anything.  Well, I suppose it was like we were jackhammering
their apartment, but that's part of life in urban society, if
they want to be Shaolin Monks eating widgetygrubs in Tibet,
that's their problem, piss off back to Tibet you bloody
wenches.

Mrs Zhong solved the dilemma by having a shower in Michael's
apartment (where I still was).  I decided to sleep on the
problem, sunscreen lotion and all, to see if I had any great 
ideas at 8am.  Before going to sleep I placed my bag near
the door so that any thief would knock it over and wake me
up.  Assuming I could hear it fall over over the noise of
the fan, anyway.  Since it was very hot, I had the fan on
quite fast.  It was quite scary going to sleep under this 
fan, that looked like it was about to fall off at any time.

But before I got quartered, sliced and diced, the bloody
alarm clock which had appeared innocuous up till now went
off.  Thanks Mr Fawlty, just what I needed, a wake up reminder
call at 11:10pm.  After pressing a variety of buttons with 
my fist in the dark, it stopped.  10 minutes later and it
went off again.  After switching the light on, I managed to
at least change the time so that I would hopefully be woken up
when I was already awake.

And now for a good night, or at least morning's sleep.  That
sleep was shattered at about 4:30am when Mr Zhong, who is an
early riser, decided to have a shower a little earlier than
the management had previously dictated as fair and reasonable.
Obviously the message had not been translated from English
to Chinese, an oversight that Xiayi leapt into action to
remedy.  Only to discover that it wasn't Mr Zhong after all
that, it was bloody Raymond, he'd just flushed the toilet,
which thanks to Fawlty Plumbing Inc, had triggered off the 
water knock in the shower.  Unbelievable.

Well in fact it was not only unbelievable, it was even untrue.
It was the bloody neighbours knocking on our door.  Most likely
those bloody Tibetans from upstairs trying to get their own
back at us, on the pretext of wanting to borrow a cup of sugar.
I started to look for the sugar, but before my brain had
postulated that since this wasn't our apartment, we likely
didn't have any sugar, Mrs Zhong had let them in, and it turned
out it was actually Hong Kong Aunt, who'd come down with a case
of burglary.

It turned out that the burglar, whom I had presumably deterred
with my great bag-in-front-of-the-door-and-underneath-the-fan
burglar trap (plus the fact that we were too lazy to open any
windows), had instead decided to go next door, where Hong
Kong Aunt had been sleeping in the room with Kevin.  Being
almost as burglar-conscious as myself, she had put her bag
right next to the bed, and even went so far as to put her
passport under the pillow.

Unfortunately Michael had opened the window a bit to let in some
fresh air, which meant the thief had only to cut open the
flyscreen, which he did so with enough noise to semi-wake Hong
Kong Aunt, who also assumed it was the Tibetans playing one of
their ridiculous musical instruments.  It was only when he
started opening the window that she had decided the Tibetans
had gone too far this time, and when a hand reached in to grab
her bag, there was a brief struggle which Hong Kong Aunt lost,
and the thief made off with an electronic translator, a cassette
recorder with a "learn to speak English in 10 tortuous years"
cassette, and a whopping $1700, presumably Hong Kong Aunt's
entire life savings, which meant that she'd have to spend the
rest of the trip washing dishes in restaurants.

By the time I arrived, Michael was outside patrolling the
area, and had discovered that the thief had dropped the knife.
But there was no thief in sight.  I could only imagine how 
scary it must have been for an old lady to see a hand coming in
through the window at the dead of night.  Truly horrifying.
The sooner these people are locked up and the key thrown away,
the better.

I tried phoning reception, but there was no answer.  I then
tried to find the phone number for the police, but without
success.  I then decided to ring 000, which was when I
discovered that the phones didn't work - in either unit!
I then went in search of a public telephone.  On the way I
remembered I was the proud owner of a mobile phone, so rang
up and ordered a cop.

About 15 minutes later, I rang up to order a second cop, to
find the first one that had obviously gotten lost.  A few
minutes later and two sets of cops rock up.  They took the
knife and asked the usual question, what's your name, what's
your father's name, what's your grandfather's name, what's
the thief's name, then were off.  They had a suspect in mind
already, and not at all interested in discussing the
probability of it being the Tibetans from upstairs.

I went around to reception, but there was a sign saying it
was closed, open at 8am or somesuch.  I then rang up the
bank to cancel Hong Kong Aunt's ATM cards.  The guy wasn't
interested in speaking to me, he wanted speak to the
cardholder.  I said that she didn't speak English, would I
like to put her on, and he gave in and spoke to the Gwai
Lo after all.  After he had all the numbers I decided to
put Hong Kong Aunt on just so that he could have a warm
feeling that he had spoken to the cardholder.  I heard
her say (slowly) "I don't speak English".  God knows what
he asked her that required an answer such as that.  "What
language don't you speak as a mother tongue?".  We then 
tried to go back and pretend to sleep, which we did 
successfully (pretend).

The next morning we heard the sound of a shower, which
turned out to be one of the Fawlty Faculty watering the
garden.  We informed them that we'd had a break-in next
door, so he went and informed Basil.  Basil came back
to do an inspection of his own.  I took the opportunity
to ask a couple of questions of my own.

Turns out that reception is open 24 hours if you knock
loudly on the right door.  Unfortunately my ESP let me
down here.  As for the phones not working, maybe there
was a problem.  Both units?  Well, did I ask for the
phones to be switched on?  Well, what do you expect if
you don't use your ESP?  What about allowing emergency
phone calls regardless, say if there's a fire?  That's
what the fire alarms are for, fitted in every unit.  He
disappeared before I thought to ask about the need for
an ambulance, but I did manage to ask about the jackhammer.

He said it was a known problem with the showers, the water
knock happened at a certain place, but if you turned it on
harder, it went away.  And why didn't they fix it if they
knew about it?  They were going to fix it today, sick of
getting complaints from Tibetans I presume.  I decided to
test the latest theory, that water knock plus extreme
violence equaled an invigorating shower.  Sure enough, 
turning it on harder did stop the jackhammer.  It instead
became thousands of needles poking into my skin, but hey,
anything to keep the Tibetans happy, that's what we fought
the bloody war for after all!  Who do these people think
they are?  Dress up as an "orange" in some fruit commercial,
call themselves the Dalai Lama, and think they're some sort
of God.  Unbelievable.

So we left Coffs Harbour, after scribbling a reminder note
"never visit again".  On the way out we saw Coffs Harbour's
answer to the Sydney Harbour Bridge (COFFHBR), which
featured in the directions we had been given to get to the
hotel.  Next stop, the Big Banana.

I had made a temporary waypoint to get to the Big Banana,
and it was quite accurate, we even saw the sign when we
got there.  Unfortunately the last 200 metres of navigation
had us rocking up at some farmer's gate rather than a
banana plantation.  But we eventually found that the "coach"
entrance was short for "coach and cars", and were soon home
and hosed.  We went on the train ride, which was about as
interesting as bananas get.  Fortunately they had a toboggan
to get down, but only Michael and myself were interested in
that option.  But finding the toboggan entrance was not
simple, and a couple of wrong turns later we found it, only
to be told that it was closed due to the rain.

We were meant to rejoin the others back at the entrance, but
they had interpreted that to mean that a bunch of them go
back to the cars, and one person went to the end of the
toboggan run.  After waiting some time, including sneaking
in through the train exit, and even whilst having some sort
of banana milkshake, we eventually reunited.

Then we were on our way to Surfers Paradise!  The Gold Coast
is actually covered by the Brisbane street directory, so I
was actually able to ring up my mum and get her to look up
"The Esplanade" and find the UTM location.  I wanted the
GPS location despite her assurances that you "can't possibly
miss it", which is the navigational equivalent of "the gun
isn't loaded".  Sure enough, on the way there was a sign
called "The Esplanade", but it was 10km shy of my waypoint,
so I stuck to my guns.

One thing we noticed, or rather, didn't notice, was that
there was no sign to say "Welcome to Queensland".  Presumably
us Southerners aren't actually welcome?  Anyway, I was
completely lost, all the way to the waypoint, and then voila,
it was just where it was meant to be.  It was raining when we
arrived.  We went down the driveway where we were stopped by
security gates, at which point I got out to find the reception.

Reception gave me the keys, with instructions on how to use
them, and said that I could check in officially tomorrow 
morning.  On the way out I noticed a sign saying "tiles
slippery when wet".  The tiles were indeed wet.  So I did
indeed slip.  After picking myself up off the ground, I went
past the next sign which said "see, told you so".  I'm not 
sure why they didn't just take down both signs, and save 
everyone a lot of grief - it took me about a week for my 
knees to heal.

The two rooms we had been given were 16 and 29.  Michael had
dibs on the room since he organized it, but since he'd just
been robbed in 29, his whole car was just one look of
superstition as they deferred to 16.  Normally I would have
explained the folly of superstition, and how much would they
like to bet that neither of us would get robbed tonight in
security units a long way from the ground floor.  But when
there was a superior view up for grabs I deferred to a
solemn "Yes, I completely agree, for the safety of your
family (our family doesn't mind occasionally being 
slaughtered by axe-wielding homicidal maniacs)".

I was the only person who thought that this was the ideal
time to go to the beach to avoid the crowds, since the rain,
cold and darkness would have helped clear the way.  I covered
my towel and clothes in a couple of plastic bags and was off.
Some time after I started body-surfing, the life guard decided 
to kick us out and go up the beach.  Up there I managed to nearly
break my arm a couple of times, before that lifeguard also
decided to pack up shop.  However, I had managed to get over an
hour's worth of body-surfing in in total.  I said I was going
to be gone for an hour, and that if my car went out they should
leave the keys with Michael who was waiting for Cousin Paul to
arrive.  Cousin Paul was doing the trip up in one hit.

As I walked back, I saw someone walking the other way, that
looked a bit like my wife, carrying an umbrella.  The closer
I got the more it resembled her.  It was just like one of
these "Gone with the Wind" type movies, her appearing out
of the darkness.  It turned out that while they had been
playing "rip the wings off the fly", they had noticed that
the life saver flags had disappeared.  And a bit after that
they had noticed that I hadn't appeared.  They had drawn
the obvious conclusion, that I had been eaten by a shark,
and they sent Xiayi down to see if I'd left my life insurance
policy down there, before someone pinched it.

We went to the local Chinese shop for dinner, and then on
impulse I bought a largish hat outside a store for $2.  We
then went ten pin bowling.  In typical Queensland style,
I managed to come second twice.  Xiayi won the first game,
Raymond the second, Raymond second score being higher than
Xiayi's first.  Likely they both cheated anyway.  We had
to wash clothes that night, as in every other night, thanks
to the prolific smokers.  Cousin Paul arrived in the
meantime, along with his wife Maggie and son Winson, making
the 3rd car.

On 1999-12-28 it was still raining, so we decided that if we
were going to get wet, we may as well do it in style at
Underwater World (UWATER).  Unfortunately this was the most
dangerous navigational exercise, as there was very little in
the way of maps to get there, and of course no GPS location.

I did the best I could with my temporary waypoint.  On the
way we went via the Glass House Mountains (GLHSMN), which I 
had been past numerous times as a child.  Because of the
rain we couldn't see anything, although we did see the
Gorilla Mountain clearly (GORILA).

Soon after that we arrived at the Ettalong Pub (ETPUB), where
I bought a hot dog, and used up the last film in my old
camera so that me and 35mm film could part ways forever.  As
it turned out, the film that we were trying so hard to use
up was completely blank.  We also popped into Aussie World
next door to have a bit of a gawk.

Getting to Underwater World was fairly hair-raising.  We went
in the general direction, with help from a couple of signs,
but the signs petered out nearer the destination, and we were
aimlessly driving around.  By good luck we managed to come
back via a street which led to Underwater World, and we were
home and hosed.  Well we would have been except for the fact
that 20 billion other people had had exactly the same idea
and the car park was full.  After driving around a couple of
times we found 2 hour parking outside.

We were able to touch some of the sea creatures, in fact,
some of them touched us!  This was quite novel.  The exhibit
is good for anyone who hasn't been on one of these things
before.  And incidentally, you don't actually get wet
yourself.  Xiayi and I separated from the group in the last
half hour, so that the others could have lunch.  We had
shared a hot dog earlier so were more interested in seeing
the last of the exhibits, before coming back to the seal
show.

As it happened, as soon as the others entered the restaurant
the crowds were trying to get into the seal exhibit, so they
skipped lunch.  We went off to the jellyfish exhibit, and
then tried to go on the ride.  Unfortunately the fascists
had restrictions on the size of the riders, 120cm or some
such malarky, so we both missed out on the ride, Xiayi just
barely.

When we tried to go back we found that there was no way to
get back, we'd come on a one-way trip.  Well, there was one
way back, and that was to go down the up escalator.  Fortunately
there wasn't many people around, and after about 10 minutes of
running we reached the bottom of the escalator.  Then went
to some movie as a filler before the seal show.  A couple of
minutes before the seal show we decided to turn up, at which
point we discovered the entrance was sealed (no pun intended).
So we went to the other entrance.  It was sealed too (pun
intended)!

However, we were still able to see half the show from this
vantage point.  We met the rest of the group afterwards, and
then left, going to a nearby McDonalds.  Next stop was
Superbee (SUPBEE), but the sign was inadequate, we had driven
past it before we realised that was the turnoff.  We acted
dead casual like we had changed our minds and were going to
go to the Big Pineapple (BIGPIN) first.

When we arrived at the Big Pineapple we turned prematurely
left into the overflow carpark instead of waiting a bit
longer and turning right, into the main one.  So a long
walk over and we were able to check it out.  We bought the
obligatory pineapple as well as the obligatory T-shirt that 
says  "I went to the Big Pineapple - I survived".

We then headed back to Superbee.  We had the GPS to guide
the return trip, but unfortunately at the roundabout I
still needed to make a decision as to which of the exits
was correct, and made the wrong choice.  Soon afterwards
the GPS showed me this, and we started turning up side
streets until we rejoined the correct road.

At Superbee they had free honey tasting there, which I 
thought was pretty cool, there were an enormous number of 
flavours, maybe 16 in all.  I didn't even know there was 
more than 1.  Also they had some honey drink samples.  So 
we bought some honey, some drink, and some honeycomb.  I 
managed to knock over some old spoons with my backpack, so 
was keen to keep a low profile, even when they were selling 
one of their bee products as being a natural antibiotic to 
prevent colds (despite the fact that antibiotics work against
bacteria, and the cold is a virus) which I would normally
have challenged them on.

Between Superbee and the Big Pineapple I had been looking
for a turnoff to go to my mother's place.  Once again it
was a case of "can't miss it" being missed, not only on
the way there, but also on the way back, although I did
manage to find the Fiesta Motel (FIESTA) on the way back.  
But with the aid of the mobile phone, I got the directions
again and was soon at my mum's place.

It was really great being able to rock up with a convoy
of cars.  Having watched the movie "Convoy", I was keen
to get a long line of cars following us, which did happen
to some extent on the way up Pacific Highway.  But anyway,
gone were the dark days when no-one showed up to my
birthday party, this was the new me, and I rocked up with
no less than 11 friends.  Well, admittedly they were only
along because I was related to them, or more to the point,
my wife was.  And admittedly they only invited me on the
trip because I owned a GPS and spoke English.  But still, 
a rocker-upper is a rocker-upper.

At the "farm" I caught up with mum and Chris.  We found
out that the humungous fish that used to be in the pond 
had died in the great floods.  Whilst walking through
my mum's personal rainforest, Cousin Paul got a leech
and ripped it off instead of asking for the advice on
what to do with it (sugar or salt - answer, salt).  We
also found out that the palm industry is a good one to
keep out of, something which was probably predictable.

I was starting to demo the GPS when Chris came up with
some whacky theory that you didn't need a GPS, all you
needed was the phone book.  No, you didn't combine this
with a mobile phone and ring up random people asking them
if they knew the way, there were maps in it.  I didn't
believe they had maps with the required detail, so he
went in and got it to prove it.  One whacky theory down
the drain and the phone book was relegated to its normal
door-stop status.

Mum had suggested visiting Dad, who was supposed to be
not that far from her place.  The others in the group
agreed, so we wrote down the directions, which were so
simple that you can't go wrong.  Chris came up with some
whacky theory that you just turned left all the time, so
that you got to Mapleton instead of going into the Pacific
Ocean.  I didn't believe it, but without a GPS position I
was in no position to do much else.

So off we went, and it was only after we had gone 100m that
I remembered I hadn't taken any photos, or given mum her
old camera back.  So I got out and went back and took a
photo.  Wasn't the group photo that I wanted, but better
than having your eyes pecked out by a buzzard.  Turns out
that they'd forgotten to take photos too, despite having
had cameras lined up ready for the occasion.  Sounds like
we both need to buy a palmtop to put reminder notices on.
Or at least, they need to buy one, and I need to work out
how to use the one I've already got.

So we were off again, I think the group was a bit
disappointed about the ratio of leeches to interesting
farm animals, but they were happy to make up for it in 
Mapleton.  Armed with the "can't go wrong" instructions,
we soon came to the legendary KFC turnoff, and naturally
we turned left.  A very short distance from this was a
roundabout, which looked like it belonged to some
suburban area, this was not a main road, and this was
not signposted from memory.  Or if it was, none of the
destinations were recognizable.

So we turned left, and followed the road for quite some
time.  We did go to the top of some hill, as we were
supposed to encounter.  Eventually we came to a T junction,
so turned left.  When roads ran out, we went left.  After
a lot of driving, the inevitable happened, we came a
complete circle.  We went past the KFC again, pretending
that we hadn't noticed that this was the same one we had
been at half an hour earlier.  I'm not sure if the other
cars were fooled or not, but this time we stuck to major
roads, and we did find a road sign pointing the way to
Mapleton.

After several km with no sign of civilization we came to
some lookout, so I decided to stop here to pretend that
I'd expertly guided us here for a view, but actually in
the hope that I could see civilization from here.  I was
in no mood for "can't miss it" instructions, and rang up
dad to find out if he had a map of any sort that he could
estimate how many km he was from any major place, such as
Nambour, or mum's place.  When he found out I was at the 
lookout, he correctly assumed it was the Mapleton lookout, 
and that I was very close, and that he was about 4-5km west.

As it turned out, he was uncannily accurate, but I didn't
know that, and when I was within a few hundred metres
or so, I abandoned the waypoint and attempted to follow
the old directions.  There was something that might have
been a hotel, I didn't see any sign saying so.  Nor did I
see any road signs to find out what the hell I was turning
in to, especially not marked "Post Office Road".  On the 
phone again and he was was able to guide me over the final 
few hundred metres.  Although there was a slight delay 
when I realised the other cars weren't following, because
Xiayi had told them not to follow, so after having just
turned around, we had to turn around then turn around again,
this time with the stragglers.

Turned out that he was 4.5km at 265 degrees, pretty damn 
close.  I misjudge a distance of over 6km as being 3km, even
when I'm looking directly at it (so at least I can be dead
accurate on the direction).  It was a pretty fancy place, 
I photographed every nook and cranny so that in the future
I didn't have to imagine what it was like, as I am wont to do.

Dad had a street directory, so I was able to create locations
for my sister Kirrily, Grandma and China Town, but I forgot 
to get Mountain Street, where I used to live.  Getting back
to Brisbane was fairly straightforward from here, but when I
rang Kirrily it turned out she was going out that night, but
Grandma was available, after having dinner at China Town.

We got within 230m of the temporary waypoint, with no sign
of life whatsoever.  It turned out that the exact spot we
wanted was 660m away from the temporary waypoint, but we
didn't have the confidence to go to the waypoint before
revising the search, instead Xiayi thought she knew the
general area.  Turned out the whole place was desolate, but
we had some sort of maps for central Brisbane that we
eventually got a match and we were able to guide our way
back past Centennial Park (CENTPK) and on to civilization 
(and back towards the waypoint!).  A lot of one way streets 
on the way caused a few loop the loops.

We marked the location on the way by, then pulled into a
side street, agreed to find our own car spots and then meet
back at the main China Town (CHINAT).  We drove all over the
place looking for a car spot, a couple of circles, where we
saw they were already waiting, before finally finding
somewhere 330m away.  Turned out the others had parked where 
we had left them - apparently there were two spots!  Oh well, 
Xiayi needed the exercise.

Also, apparently at one point where we had got some lights
which the others had missed, meaning we had to wait for them
to catch up, we were being watched by the police, since we
were essentially "parking" in the middle of a major road,
but they saw our NSW licence plates and decided we weren't
worth the effort, especially after we moved off with the
light change.

Dinner was OK, then we tried to get back to Pacific Highway
using the map facility on the GPS.  We did a few circles,
but finally broke out.  We then took the gold coast exit.
This seemed like a very desolate stretch of road, with all
signposts disappearing.  We were undoubtedly lost, but the
GPS still thought it knew where we were, so I deferred to
its superior intellect.

We then took some unknown exit in an attempt to get to
Carina, which by now was as close as we could get without
turning off.  We then got lost immediately, the signs
coming too late to prevent us from disappearing up some
back streets.  We were well and truly lost, but still
maintained blind faith in the GPS.  We eventually rejoined
a major road, saw some signs that looked hopefully, but
all were decoys, we stuck to the GPS.

It wasn't until we emerged from some backstreet that I've
never been on before.  All the entrances and exits I've
made from Carina in the past were never this one.  So it
wasn't until the final 200 metres that I recognized where
we were, and the GPS had indeed been accurate all along.

I rang up Grandma to let us know that we would be there in
30 seconds if she could open the front door (she normally
never opens the front door, we all have to slink in via
the back door, presumably so that the neighbours don't
find out what a motley bunch of folk her relos are.  I got
all my surrogate friends to pile in, save 4 who I think
were asleep, including the 2 kids.  This time I got photos
of the whole gang.  Unfortunately I left the camera case
there, but at the time I didn't know that, and the 10 people
who could have noticed, didn't.  Grandma made a half-hearted
attempt to get the group to become paid-up members of the 
Scottish Nationalist Party, but I don't think any of them
understood what she was talking about, I sure didn't!

We didn't stay very long, we'd arrived at just 3 minutes
before the 11pm deadline we had agreed on.  We got directions
on how to get out of here, although no-one was sure about
whether we would have to pay the toll.  We had to pay a toll
going North, which was so silly, as even without the toll, I
was undecided as to which was the best route up.  If I'd
known we would be paying the toll the choice would have been
much simpler.  Mind you, the road signs were so confusing
that I'm not sure I could have gotten the other road anyway,
as it is I was following signs to some quite bizarre places.

Anyway, we really needed the street signs to work on the
way back, and although it was difficult, it did actually
work.  We arrived home at 12:30am, stinking of smoke from
the China Town restaurant.

The next day I rang up Grandma to confirm that she had my
camera case, and rang my sister, Kirrily, to ask her to pick 
it up before we met, and let her know we were on the way to
Movie World.  I then attempted to navigate us to the NRMA
office in Southport marked on the map, in order to see if 
they had discounts for entrance.

I managed to drive us into a dead end near the ocean, where
I could see that there was a bridge you were meant to use
to get across.  There was a motorway where the office was
meant to be, so we decided to fill up with petrol then do
a big circle around to try again, to see if it was out by
one street or something.  By chance this route took us
past the RACQ (RACQ), which I marked as I went by, then did
a circle to get back.  I'm quite sure the other cars thought
I had lost all my marbles, but fortunately they don't know
how to express that in English.

Regardless, we rocked up, confirmed reciprocal rights for
NRMA members, and were soon armed with a stack of tickets.
On the previous trip I had marked the turn off to Movie
World (MWWWTO) so was able to get there relatively easily.
Of course it was the last bit that gave me the trouble,
the sign said "Movie World Studio Entrance", without
another one saying "Movie World Main Entrance" pointing
elsewhere, so I almost took the former.

The first thing we went to was Pokermon, which was so
incredibly boring that I was almost ready to start
ripping their heads off.  This inspired us to part
ways, Michael and I headed to Lethal Weapon whilst the
rest of them went elsewhere, to meet back later.

As it turned out, the Lethal Weapon ride was fairly
boring too, in the couple of minutes it took, I went
to sleep whilst Michael was yawning, as the photo
clearly showed.  It turned out the others had gone to
Batman, and we had to wait ages for them to rejoin us
at the meeting place, when we could have been doing
something else.  Especially when it turned out that
Batman was another ride, which Michael & I wanted to
go on anyway!

We then had hotdogs, then went onto some "Gremlin"
ride.  This was pretty pathetic, first of all they
showed some stupid bloopers, which were about as
funny as me saying "frogs come from frogland" 50
times in a row.  They then came out with their usual
"We've had an alert, the gremlins have escaped, please
evacuate", designed to impress children under the age
of 2, people with an IQ less than 7, and Xiayi.

We then piled on to the little boats, and it was only
then that it turned out that this turned out to be the
scariest ride in the park.  As we left, the girl pointed
to someone and said "Oh, you're not wearing your seatbelt".
Blind panic swept through me, as I wasn't wearing one
either.  And if this ride required a seatbelt, it meant
that it was similar to Lethal Weapon, in that if you're
not strapped in, you're dead.

I quickly searched for the seatbelt, sliding my hand all
over and under the seat.  Mine didn't have one.  Ann was
sitting next to me, and I was on the verge of tossing her
overboard in order to get her seatbelt.  Hey, sacrifices
need to be made.  I was the last person to still be
panicking (presumably the others had found theirs), when 
Xiayi (sitting on the other side of me), informed me that
they don't have seatbelts, it was a joke.

In the melee I managed to lose my brand new hat, but I
didn't know that at the time.  When we got out at the
other end, the girl said "No gremlins with you are there?"
and directed us to the exit.  After we were out, I realised
I had lost my hat, and went in through the exit that said
"no entrance", to ask the girl if she'd seen my hat, and
to congratulate her on the scariest ride in the park.  I
asked her if she really hated having to say the same line
every minute, and she said yes, it was a pretty bad job, 
especially after 3 hours.  She suggested I try lost
property, that's where it would end up.

I rocked up to Lost Property, and queued behind someone
who had "lost a camera".  What sort of camera?  I'm not
sure, just one of those handheld ones, my wife bought it,
have any turned up?  I wonder if this guy is a professional
theme park goer, trolling for cameras or any other electrical
equipment to pay for the entrance?

I went on the Batman ride whilst the others went on some more
kiddy rides.  Now this ride was scary, but more to the point
it was dangerous.  I wasn't strapped in sufficiently to
prevent being thrown against the side.  I managed to stave
off injury with my arm, but later I found out that Mr Zhong
had not escaped, and had actually bled!  If people are 
bleeding in this ride, it means that it is possible for AIDS
to be spread.  This makes the ride the scariest and most
dangerous in the park, and even kids are allowed on it!  I
think kids are too small to reach the side though, so it's
probably less dangerous for them.

I rejoined the others at a Looney Tunes ride, where I
desperately protected my backpack from the water.  Then we
went to Police Academy.  This was very well done.  They
were getting people from the audience as recruits, including
one guy who was getting his own back.  That guy also fell off
his chair down below when a gun went off.  At this point
Xiayi had figured out that he was a stooge, but I was
blissfully unaware.  When he jumped out of a window, I was
quite surprised at them getting audience members to do things
like that, but it was still possible, it was a soft fall.

But when the stooge starting driving around in a motorbike
and various other daredevil stunts, I was fairly confident
that he was a stooge.  We did have one problem with some
kid before the show started, kicking Xiayi in the back.  I
gave him due warning.  If he did it again I was planning on
going to where he was sitting, and sitting where he was
sitting, which would have caused him to be uncomfortable
and Xiayi protected.  He did kick her once more, during the
show, but I didn't see Xiayi react so didn't do anything.

It was nearing the end of the day, and I recommended to
Michael that he go on the Batman ride (not because I 
don't like him and wanted him to catch AIDS!).  Somehow he
managed to convince me that I wanted to catch AIDS too,
so I went with him.  Unfortunately I forgot to pass my
backpack on to someone else, so it was doubly scary, the
risk of me getting AIDS combined with the risk of my 
electronic gear getting AIDS.  In the end, no-one got AIDS, 
and we went to the Wild West ride, where I got quite wet.
It was good too.  Lost Property still didn't have my hat, 
and we left.

On the way back I thought I'd demonstrate my GPS to Cousin 
Paul, by getting him to be the lead car with me giving
directions.  I didn't realise the repercussions that this
entailed.  There were two problems.  I didn't speak Chinese,
and he didn't know that my directions were not meant to
override the road rules.  As soon as we got out, we had to
make a decision on straight or left.  It was only after I
chose "straight" that we were able to see the street signs
which showed us that we had chosen the wrong one.  God only
knows the mentality of the sickos at the RTA who put these 
signs up, they may as well add "Ha Ha" to all of them.

Straight ahead turned out to be even scarier than the Gremlin
ride.  Because at one junction I decided to turn left.  At
the last minute Cousin Paul realised that turning left would
entail having a head-on smash with the car coming at speed
the opposite direction.  So after giving way, we went straight,
did a U-ey, then managed to return to the original location.

The next problem came when I thought we had got through lights
without the other 2, and expressed by concerns as "have we
got all three?".  I didn't get a reply to this, so I said to
pull over.  So all 3 cars pulled over despite the fact that
we had a green light!  When I found out we did have all 3
cars, all of them pulled over missing the green light, we
took off again.  After the near death experiences of today,
I went back into my box and travelled with Raymond only again.

That night we decided to go to Jupiter's Casino (JUPCAS).  I
had marked the approximate location of this before too.  I
explained at great lengths to Maggie how you could play so
that you could have a 90% chance of winning 10% on your money
(and a 10% chance of losing the lot).  Well, the exact figures
for Roullette and doubling are 6.9536% chance of losing the
lot, 93.0464% chance of making 6.6667% on your stake.  She
didn't really seem to believe that it was that straightforward,
so we did a couple of trials, which she won.  And I pointed
out that you had to be disciplined enough that when you have
made your 10%, you have to walk out with a smile, not linger.
The more you linger, the more you lose.  So even if she won
the first bet, she had to stop, and walk out with a smile on
her face, a total of 1 minute activity at the casino.

She still wasn't convinced, so when we got there, I had to
bet first so she could have a live demo.  But getting in
to the casino in the first place was a bit of a problem.
I didn't have a collared shirt, everyone else had fancy
clothes to wear except me.  Not only that but I had my
trusty backpack on.  I did have a jacket which had a collar, 
but it was hot.  So in the end what I did was put my jacket
on at the last minute, made sure I was in the middle of the
bunch, talking to Xiayi who looked like a million bucks, as
we went past the securitate.  It worked, I was in, and
ready and willing to make $10 on my $70 stake.

We tried to find a non-smoking table, but the whole place
reeked of smoke.  Even in the small number of non-smoking
areas, it stunk.  So much so that even smokers smoked in
the non-smoking area, hell, what difference did it make.
None.  So, I was planning on making this as brief as
possible.  Fortunately they had a $5 minimum, so was up
for losing less than I expected.  So up rolled the high
roller.

I bet on red, the closest to me.  I lost.  Next round
the guy who was sitting down was making so many bets,
plastering the table, that I couldn't get my bet in.
He only stopped when the guy said "no more bets",
which was where I had my break, and quickly made the
bet.  Fortunately they are serious when they say "no
more bets", and didn't allow my bet.  It came up black.

Next bet, black.  Another bet, black.  The last of my
money went on, I knew damn well that the 93% chance I
had come in with had turned into a <50% chance of
winning the final hand.  In fact, I fully expected to
lose the final hand, the odds were indeed against me.
Red 7!!!  It wasn't so much leaving with a smile on my
face, as losing 10 years of my life.  Red 7 came up
another two times, making a hatrick, almost as if the
gods were laughing at me.

I took my money, and asked Maggie if she thought I was
going to lose, which she admitted she did.  I told her
that that was with bad luck.  She didn't understand why
I thought I had bad luck.  I explained that if I had
good luck, I would have one the first one!  Maggie then
sat down to play.  There was a bit of a delay and then
I heard the man ask her if she spoke English.  She said
she did, and then I listened closely to what he was
trying to do.  He was trying to get her to sign up to
the special colours.  I quickly told her she wanted $5
tokens, and they were duly doled out.

Maggie played, and immediately won $5.  I was then hauled
away to look at some poker machine, and when I came back
I found that Maggie had not walked away with a smile on
her face, but instead decided to push her luck and bet
another 10, which she lost, so she was now $5 down.  Later
on I found that she had started the strategy from scratch
again, staking $5 and winning, so breaking even, and then
broke the strategy, by betting $10, but she won this time,
at which point she stopped, with a smile on her face.  She
still has the smile, every time I ask her about it.

Xiayi went in search of a blackjack machine, with an
agreement to meet back at the same place.  At this stage
I couldn't stand the smoke any longer, and got the car keys
off Raymond and went to cash in my chips, agreeing to return
to the same spot when done.  When I came back, everyone had
gone!  Shortly after, Xiayi turned up, without finding a
blackjack machine, and we both agreed to go to the car.

Xiayi went to sleep, whilst I listened to the radio.  An
hour later, Raymond returned, having spent much of the time
looking for Xiayi, and claiming to have not wandered very
far from the original meeting place, and also claiming to
have been keeping an eye out.  Admittedly we only hung around
for about 30 seconds or less.  After the hour he had decided
she was most likely in the car, or failing that, that it was
my turn to start looking for her.

Anyway, today proved that the 4 day forecast of rain was
incorrect, and also proved that mosquitoes found Xiayi an
attractive host, she had been eaten alive.  And also that
I should steer clear of non-non-smoking venues.

The next day, the 30th, Kirrily rang me to say she was
coming down.  So everyone else went to the shops, waiting
for me to call them to say I was ready to leave (the plan
was to go to Frozen World and Sea World).  Whilst I was
waiting, I noticed a beep that was coming from somewhere
every 41 seconds.  After a lot of effort I had finally
decided on a particular (locked) cupboard that housed the 
beep.

This cupboard was near the lounge, where Raymond slept.
If this problem wasn't fixed, he would likely be kept
awake all night by this beep.  He'd probably be listening
to it, trying to time it so that he had 41 seconds to fall
asleep before it shattered the ambience.  So I rang 
reception to get them to fix it.  Another call later, and
someone finally arrived, but didn't have the key.  I tried
switching off the major appliances, but that didn't help
any, and he reckoned it wasn't the fire alarm.

Kirrily came and I got some photos, plus my camera case
back.  About 10 minutes after she left, the others all
returned, so I missed out on getting a mass photo.  All
this time Xiayi had been sleeping because she was sick,
but woke up about the same time as the others arrived,
so everything was a case of 10 minutes too late.

We then agreed that we'd have our separate lunches, and
meet back.  We didn't actually explicitly state where we
were going to meet back, I had assumed our flat, since
that's where we were last.  About 1.5 hours passed, still
no sign of the reunion, and meanwhile we were having
indepth discussions on possible destinations, with the
possibilities fast disappearing the longer we talked.

I was told that the current plan was going to 
involve us going to Frozen World to see if it looked
interesting (I was keen to find out how someone can
tell more from a brick wall than they can by a glossy
brochure), come back to the RACQ to get the discount
tickets, then return to Frozen World and the interesting
brick wall.  I was really keen to find out if people
really were prepared to go to that effort.

Downstairs finally arrived, and we put to them the
possibility of Currumbin, which I thought was very
impressive for anyone who hasn't had 10 lorikeets
standing on their arms and head before.  They agreed
that that sounded impressive, so off we went, forgetting
to go to the RACQ first, remembering, taking a wrong
turn, trying again, and finally getting the tickets.

On the way to Currumbin there were a lot of signs
tempting us to turn off to Currumbin, but I stuck
with the GPS, which was ultimately successfully and
we finally arrived at the Currumbin Wildlife 
Sanctuary (CURRUM).  We went and gawked at some
kangaroos, then caught the little train the rest of
the way.  It was only then that I realised just how
fat Xiayi had become since we were up here last.  She
even had to cross her legs to make enough room for the
both of us.  We changed trains and I tried to swap 
Xiayi for Winson, but Maggie wouldn't have a bar of it.

A bit more wandering and it was time for the lorikeet
feeding.  I've been there done that already, so made no
effort to join in, I was just trying to capture the rest
of them on camera.  There wasn't many birds coming down
though, so the photos I had got so far were not that
good.  And would you believe it, I wasn't even carrying
any food, but I got a bird on my head anyway, when
people who actually wanted one were going without.  I
attempted to dislodge the one that I had and redirect
him to the food, only being successful in the former.

For reasons which I don't understand, the others were
keen to leave instead of waiting to see if the birds,
which were still present, would come down in larger
numbers.  On the way back we let some of the number out
to go shopping for food.

Then we went out, to check out the shooting range.  This
was quite expensive, so it ended up being just me and
Raymond who stayed, and Mr Zhong to watch.  We went for
the $50 pistol special.  This was certainly an experience
well worth having.  These handguns have a massive kick
to them.  It was a bit dangerous for me though, as I don't
concentrate very well and forgot to make sure my thumb was
out of the way.  Lucky it was out of the way anyway, so
the thing that recoils didn't take my thumb off.  I thought
we both did well at the shooting itself, Raymond did the
best, even getting a bullseye.

We then came out to inform Michael that he should have a
go at it, it was worth it.  Meanwhile the others had been 
playing ten pin bowling.  Xiayi was losing very badly.  I
took over her position, and continued the long line of
gutterballs.  Michael won and then went shooting.  However,
in the next game, I came back in force, scoring 141 which
beat everyone's score in all games.

We then went to the games arcade, which is smoke free, and
decided to play the laser shootout game.  We were offered
the opportunity to play in a team against 3 other people,
all bigger than us, which we agreed to, only to find out
that we couldn't play in teams after all because of bust
equipment.  After a bit of a logic flaw in the numbers, I
accepted that teams were not possible, and so it was every
man for himself, except for Xiayi, for whom it was every
woman for herself.  

The laser shootout was excellent, and I found out that my 
forte in life is shooting people in the back.  I scored
more than double everyone else's score, except for the 2nd
place getter, who I scored just a little less than double.
The others had presumably been lying around waiting for me
to shoot them.

We didn't play dodgem cars, because Xiayi had already been
playing that with Raymond, and had spent most of her time
crashing backwards into people, much like in her real life
driving escapades.  I tried the artificial skiing machine,
which was pretty good.  I then decided to play the soccer
machine.  According to a brief read of the instructions, you
got points based on how hard you kicked the "ball".

I was only wearing thongs, so took them off, and then CRUNCH,
I found out that it was actually a steel pole with a bit of
padding around it, and the fine print said you needed to wear
shoes.  I hobbled off with my fractured foot, to go and play
on the pinball machines, Raymond who was wearing shoes finishing
off the game.

Soon after we started playing pinball, one flipper each, the
machine broke, the ball getting stuck.  I went off to ask the
attendant to fix it, I know how these things work, you get a
free game to make up for the one that got interrupted, but still
get to finish the current game.

Whilst waiting for the attendant, we got Raymond to mind the
bust machine, whilst Xiayi and I played the second (there were
3 machines there).  This machine then broke down, so I called
for the attendant again, Xiayi minding the bust machine.  I
was then going to play the 3rd machine, but Raymond suggested
that was a bad idea, as no-one could mind the machine whilst
someone else went and got the attendant.

So after a while I went and tried finding an attendant again.
This time I found one walking around and waylaid him.  He fixed
the 1st machine and gave us a free game on it, then moved on to
fixing the 2nd.  We bust the 1st one again, so he gave us a free
game on the 3rd, whilst fixing the 2nd.  He decided to put the
2nd machine out of action, and just fix the 1st again.  He then
left, and Raymond finished playing the remaining balls of the
1st, whilst Xiayi and I continued on the 3rd.  The 3rd then
broke, so Xiayi minded that whilst I got another attendant.

Xiayi and Raymond were getting sick of playing free pinballs,
but I insisted that we take opportunities in life as they
arrive, no matter how tired we may be.  Xiayi and I continued
on the remaining free games on the 1st, Raymond played the
fixed 3rd, and then on the last game on the 1st, I got a lucky
number, so got to go another round.  We were well and truly
pinballed out by the time we left.

The smoking in the ten pin bowling had given me a headache.
I had just barely escaped smoke in the shooting.  Hong Kong
Aunt meanwhile had been sick all day, and had stayed at home.

The next day, New Year's Eve 1999, the last day of the
millenium according to the normalized calendar, something 
I've been waiting 2000 years for, I woke up late, probably
delaying the group by an hour.  They wanted to go to China
Town for Yum Cha.  Meanwhile, Raymond had managed to sleep
through the 41 second beep which hadn't been fixed.

Michael wanted me to suggest some tourist attractions in
Brisbane, which we could see to/from China Town.  I wasn't
aware of any tourist attractions, so rang up Kirrily to
find out where they were, as I hadn't noticed them in the
15 years I had lived in Brisbane.  Kirrily summed up the
range of tourist attractions as "Brisbane's a dump".  She
suggested that if there was anything, it would be in South
Bank.

But I wanted to use the opportunity to take some photos of
where I used to live, which was right next to the Mt Gravatt
lookout, which I thought they would be interested in.  They
agreed, and from Kirrily I got her GPS location (turns out
her husband, Chris, has a GPS), plus an estimation that Mt
Gravatt was 1km south from where they lived.

The car power cable for my GPS turned out to be bust, but
I was having great life out of my NiMH batteries.  We took
the Mt Gravatt Exit (MTGRVX), soon had no idea where we
are, just hoping the GPS did, until Garden City (GDNCTY)
appeared from nowhere and I was back on home soil.  We
then missed the turnoff to the lookout, which wasn't 
properly marked, and instead ending going up Mountain Street 
to where I used to live.  I took a few photos to the 
bemusement of the neighbours, who had never seen that
many Asians in one spot since Vietnam.  I forgot to mark the
GPS location though, but it's probably derivable from the
track, and I expect to get it another day anyway.

We then proceed perilously back to the lookout, which involved
some turns across traffic that saw us lose the other cars, and
I needed to get out to attract their attention up the lookout
road.  This worked, and we were at the Mt Gravatt Lookout
(MGLOOK) soon after.  We then headed towards the city, hoping
that Logan Road would do the trick.  It more-or-less did, and
we parked in the China Town car park and had Yum Cha, with
Winson proudly showing off his drink bottle much to Kevin's
annoyance.

After Yum Cha we wandered around the area a bit, did a little
shopping, saw a stall selling supposedly legal drugs that give
you highs, got a few highs, supposedly legal.  I found a place
to sit down, right next to a loudspeaker.  Then they switched
it on and I was blasted about 5 shops down.  An angry shopkeeper
told them to tone it down or they'd be forced out.  It was
ridiculously loud, and ridiculous.  The others eventually met
up, having not done anything much more interesting than me.
What can I say, Brisbane's a dump.

Next stop was Southbank.  I could see approximately where it
was on the map, but not the distance.  I attempted to go there
via the Story Bridge (STORY) too, which I did successfully.
But the second bit was not successful.  I was attempting to
go Southeast to get around the river, but a few km down the
track when I saw from the GPS that I was closer to Grandma's
than South Bank, I decided a U-turn was the better part of
valour.

I now attempted to go to the city, but veering west, to try
to avoid the river.  This worked, and we eventually came
across a street on our map, which confirmed we were nearly
there.  Later we came across a sign that pointed the way, 
and were soon in the correct area, with a waypoint so that 
we could always get back there.  However, the main problem 
was getting into the Parklands.  All the roads were closed.  
One of the  closed roads had an attendant there, and when we 
asked him how we were supposed to get in, he said to go 
through the closed road he was guarding, on the wrong side 
of the road!

As bizarre as this was, we ended up in the South Bank
Parklands Parking (STHBPP).  Parking looked like it was
$30, but that was for the New Years, so long as we were out
by 5pm (otherwise we'd be towed), it was $7.  We then
started wandering around.  We found the famous Artificial 
Beach (ARTBCH), had a bit of food, asked a cop if this was 
the right place for the Millenium Riots (he said no, that was
happening down in Sydney), wandered around a bit of a
tropical rainforest walk, past some Chinese Temple, what 
can I say, Brisbane's a dump.  The crowds had already started
gathering for the new year, and there was a barge in the 
middle of the river doing a broadcast.

We left for home, glad to get petrol on the way, before the
world blew up.  When we got back, it was 5:30pm, and we
found that the road we lived on was due to close at 5pm.
Fortunately the government was late.  We had dinner in
Michael's apartment, then I borrowed Cousin Paul's video
camera to make some home movie, which would show the
writing of the world's first C program in a variety of
time zones.

Back in our apartment, I decided to do a short interview
of everyone's aspirations in the new millenium.  Closer
to midnight, Ann wanted to go down amongst the crowds,
presumably she wanted to be spewed over by the drunks.
The group was split in two, and it ended up being me
that had the altercations with the drunks.  One of them
managed to brush past me taking the lens cap off the
camera, but Xiayi managed to find it again.  I headed
to a steel pole in order to keep the camera protected.

Then some druggo decided to start leaning on me, and
then proceeded to lie on the floor.  The police decided
to get rid of him.  It's unbelievable that people would
miss an event like this.  We were in sight of a clock,
which was accurate enough.  I had synched my watch to
the GPS so had super accurate time.  I had my own
digital watch to look at during the rollover though,
with a 4-digit year.  Xiayi and I watched the watch
as it ticked over and the world failed to blow up.

The fireworks blew up though, and actually they were
quite good, being so close to them.  We headed back to
the unit.  On the way, Kevin was kissed by some white
woman, which is ironic because that was Michael's new
years resolution.  We also found that the smoker's
new millenium's resolution to give up smoking had lasted
a whopping 5 minutes.  We rejoined the others, went home,
where Hong Kong Aunt had slept through the whole thing.
She's presumably an advocate of the 2001 version of the
millenium.  And after all that effort, no-one remembered
to riot.

We checked out just before 10am, and at 10am in the car
park I wrote the final "hello, world" C program for the
millenium, this being the true one, UTC.

As we headed down south, we were nearing a fuel station
when Cousin Paul wanted to stop, but since he didn't
have a mobile, we couldn't tell him that we were nearly
at another one.  So instead ours and Michael's car went
to the cheaper one, and we stood guard waiting for Cousin
Paul to rejoin.  Next we went to McDonalds, and next we
were nearing Coffs Harbour.

I had figured that we could just pop into the Big Banana
to do the toboggan.  We were about 30km from the toboggan
when clouds started forming.  About 5 minutes before we
got there, it had started raining.  When we arrived, there
were still people coming down the hill on the toboggan,
but when we tried to get on, they closed it down.

We hadn't planned far enough ahead to decide whether Cousin
Paul was going to stop at our hotel before doing the rest
of the journey.  I assumed he would want to, so we turned
off to Taree.  We soon realised we had lost both cars, and
our mobile was out of range.  Turned out that Cousin Paul
had decided to part ways, and had informed Michael.

We eventually rejoined, booked in at the Pacific Motel
(PACMOT), and split into 3 groups for dinner.  Xiayi and 
I went to the local Chinese restaurant.  There was some 
confusion over whether it was non-smoking or not, so we 
ended up eating with the ants and cockroaches when we 
could have been sitting inside.

After dinner we all headed off to watch Michael fish.  He
chose a place which we later found out was 6 inches (15cm)
of weedy water.  There were ripples in the water which
sounded like fish jumping around.  I tried using my torch
to do "spotting".  I asked what they were using as bait,
and they reckoned "soy sauce".  If that sort of thing
works for Chinese fish, I've never heard of it working
here.  I almost caught a moth, but it got away.

As we walked around some club, some guys told us that we
were fishing in 6 inches of weedy water, we should go
down to the wharf (TRWHRF) where there was deep water.  So 
we did, and found that there were lots of people fishing, but
no-one had caught anything.  We were now so far away from
the hotel, that it was agreed that I should go back,
fetch one of the cars, come back, fetch Michael, to fetch
his car, and subsequently get the whole family back.  As
complex as this sounds, it worked.  

So ended the epic fishing adventure, a bit before 10pm.  
Meanwhile, Cousin Paul got back at about 11:30pm.  Also
that day I found and fixed a Y2K bug in my program to 
transfer waypoints from my GPS.  Actually it wasn't a 
true Y2K bug, because it was brought about by the arrival 
of January, any January, not the millenium in particular.

The final day of the journey, and our car had breakfast,
but Michael's had decided to go to McDonald's for breakfast.
There was a sign in Taree that proclaimed that McDonald's
was the only place to stop, but we didn't actually see
any McDonald's!  It wasn't until just after 11am that we
finally came across one, just as they were starting to
see McDonald mirages everywhere.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, arriving home at 3pm.
So in summary, what would I suggest?  I think that they
have done the Gold Coast quite well actually, it's sort
of like a "tourist paradise", or a gigantic theme park.
I've always thought that the Gold Coast was just one big
barrel of hype, but if it ever was, now it is an
entertainment complex, you can get everything you want
under one roof.  You could probably spend a month there.
And what would I do differently?  I probably wouldn't
have gone to Brisbane.  Brisbane's a dump.