People & Places
Montoya's Australian blog October 2007
Dave Montoya and family keep us up to speed with all the latest happenings in their life on the Australian Gold Coast
G'Day once again from Gold Coast Australia! We have just entered November as you know, so a late input for October, apologies!
Life, as always, is busy out here, and it's no different to the UK in many ways. We get up in the morning, (somewhat earlier), go to work, home late arvo/early evening and chill out with the family… after a few stubbies (beers), of course. The weather is warming up nicely now. It has been around the 30 degrees mark of late which is not bad for the last month of Spring - roll on Summer! Queensland is blessed with some of the best weather in Australia all year round and that's why it's called the Sunshine State!
It's that time of year now where, unfortunately for you guys in the UK, it's cold and wet and we are nice and warm (warm for most of the year in fact). Most days now consist of working Monday to Friday and hitting the beaches or parks at weekends. As it gets warmer and a tad lighter in the evenings (we have no daylight savings in Queensland) we tend to go to the beaches after work as well as it's only 10-15 minutes away. It beats getting home in the UK and trying to get to the beach on a warm day which used to take us up to one and a half hours with the traffic; and when you get there you have to try and find somewhere to park and then somewhere to sit on the beach! Beaches over here are so much cleaner, nicer, available, unspoilt and vast - in fact they are a way of life over here. Of course we do have some dangers: sharks, jellyfish, bluebottles and rip tides, to name a few. But that's life here and the life surfers are great and geared up for all situations. It's not too bad, honest! A couple of popular beach places we go to are Surfers Paradise, Main Beach and Labrador. All are great for surfing, swimming, building sand castles or just tanning - safely of course!
To enjoy this kind of life accounts for some of the reason why we emigrated to Australia - the Great Outdoors is so often readily available. There's no more checking the weather to see if a warm day is predicted so we can take a trip to the beach. You know 80 per cent of the time it's going to be warm. You just need to decide where and what you are going to do weekends. For us it usually involves a beach and water somewhere, especially after Josh (our son) finishes his soccer, or touch footie on Saturday mornings with us watching him in the mid to late 20 degrees at 9am in the morning!
Our kids, Lauren (13) Josh (11) Chloe (7) and of course Matthew (3¾) love nothing more than being in the water. The older two do spend a lot of time at the Wet n Wild theme park at the weekends as they have all year round passes and we live only five minutes away. It can be bliss at times with just the younger two at a beach! We do sit back at times and really pinch ourselves, knowing how lucky we are to have the lifestyle we have. Of course, there is a downside to all this - the rest of your family! Not seeing them can at times be upsetting and sometimes leaves us wondering why we left, but our immediate family is what comes first, rightly or wrongly.
You have to weigh it all up. The life we had, or the life we have to offer our kids now, as well as the lifestyle too. We all have great new friends out here and you learn to adjust, that's life!
Anyway that's it for now; it's time to chill out with a beer or two. Catch us later in November for another update, and again keep those emails coming! It seems a lot of UK residents are looking to come to Australia still to enjoy this great life!
Dave, Lin and the kids
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