Before we met, Louise did a lot of overseas travel. She went to Fiji, New Caledonia and Europe. The extent of my International travel was going to Manly and Tasmania. (For international readers Manly is "across the Heads"  in Sydney, Australia, and Tasmania is our Southern Island State.) This is just a very brief Summary of all the trips Louise and I have done since we married in 1987. 

Louise wrote her own book about our trips and I was sworn not to duplicate her writings. Fortunately, her book of our trip stories is again up for any who have missed them, as per the link in the Author notes of this chapter. Hence the shortness of this chapter, as I am under orders not to "steal any of her thunder!"

We went for our honeymoon, in 1987, to Coolangatta in Queensland. We did a few of the "Theme Parks" during that time as well. These included Sea World, Dream World (more recently in the news due to deaths of some of the tourists there.) I was a bit sorry in retrospect, we did not rent the car we had on some days for a lot longer. The next 2 years on our Anniversaries, we went to Forster, on the North Coast of NSW. We stayed in the Fiesta Motel. On a trip up there earlier this year (2013) we found out that Motel was demolished, and is now a High Rise Hotel. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to check it out. 

We had friends in Victoria and South Australia so we would do driving trips down there at times. In 1993 we flew; and in 2000,  we drove - right across the country to Western Australia. There is a lot more to the 1993 trip but I don’t want to steal my wife’s "thunder" on that one ok.

On one of our trips a year before we left Tax, (1996) we went on the "Ghan," an overnight train journey to Alice Springs from Adelaide. One of the ladies at work, reminded me recently of my saying, back then after we got back to work.in the old days..."Not going on the Ghan again!!" 

We then picked up a rental car in Alice Springs and had a couple of days there. Including the "non-appearance" of Singer, Ted Egan, whom we had been looking forward to hearing at his show.  We actually drove out to where the show was supposed to take place and waited and waited and waited. Nothing happened. Next day, we drove to Uluru or the "Ayer's Rock Resort".for a couple of days – just one night only. It was pretty full on for a couple of days. At the finish, we drove the car to Ayer's Rock Airport for the return home by air.

That was our first encounter with the security of a kind that was a forerunner of things to come, security-wise, at Airports, later on. This was in 1996. One thing a lot of people don't know is; that in our situation, we have had to be at airports at LEAST 2 hours before departure - back in the old days. 

We would be put on the aircraft, first, before the rest of the passengers. Then on the other end, we were last to be taken off. These days, with new regulations and security, .we would have to be at the Airport THREE hours before departure.
 
Our last year of work, 1997 we flew to Tasmania, to which both of us had been, before separately. This was our first time there, together. We would have liked to have had more time in some of the places we visited, but we could not stay any longer. 

An important thing to remember about the Tasmanian roads in those days was a lack of warnings, particularly on bends! They are lovely to drive on as they don't get as much wear as the roads on the mainland. But no bend speed recommendations. Due to this, we nearly left the road a few times. 

This was the year my Mum had her stroke, which was a real shock to us all.