Departure from OZ

We played our final round of golf at Robina Woods yesterday. This is a very good course and is sort of like playing a mountain course as it has lots of up hills and down and is heavily treed.

We depart tomorrow morning for Auckland where we will over over night at the Oakwood Manor. We have stayed there before and it is OK. Not much but as good as you can find for$99 a night. There are not many quality hotels around the airport, just a lot of old motels.

The last month has been very good in Australia. No rain to speak of and temperatures around 27.

We have 4 bowlers and 4 golfers left. They will be here for one more week. All 8 are staying in Twin Towns.

Went up to Tambourine Mt the other day to check on the wine situation. There are about 14 different cellar doors on the mountain. They do grow grapes there but they are mainly for show as all the wine sold up there is from the Granite Belt about 2 hours south. They use Tambourine for their outlet as there are lots of tourist up there. They have some nice restaurants and the wine from the Granite Belt is good. This is a good place for the wine drinkers to explore next year.

The golf course up there is very pretty but hill and tough to walk. Now that we have played it once we will not do it again but if you are going there and want a hit check it out.

From Auckland we head to Fiji for 8 days. Will stay at a golf resort for 4 nights then take a two night cruise and spend 2 nights at the airport. During the time there we will GPS and review the two main courses as we play them. It is in preparation for next year when we will offer 3, 7 and 14 day packages. They could be the final destination or could be stop overs for those coming and going to Australia and NZ.

Each year we are sad when we have to leave OZ. The living is easy here and we like the area a lot. We have our places lined up for next year with a return to the Sunshine Coast and then back to Mermaid Beach on the Gold Coast. We are also thinking of a side trip for 2 nights to the Granite Belt for wine tasting and maybe 3night at Crains.

Next report should be from Fiji.