We thought we were headed to Brisbane. After all that’s where we flew in to from Melbourne. But as we faithfully followed the google maps lady towards our next Airbnb we discovered the Gold Coast – a whole metropolis with its own international airport and a series of beach towns along the beautiful coastline. Apparently the gold refers not to the color of the sand, which tends more towards a fine powdery off-white, but to real estate prices. This area is densely developed, with high rises all the way along the beach, and a section that Jen and I dubbed “Dubai”.

We came up to the Gold Coast for one reason – the beach. And we were more than happy with what we found. Every morning after breakfast Jen walked to the beach. Jo worked with the kids to help them finished their schoolwork and we soon followed. The day was spent in serious pursuit of laying at the beach, boogie boarding, body surfing, walking, swimming, and whatever else we could manage. In the evenings Jen and I cooked dinner and the adults had a bit of wine. And we finished watching the last four episodes of Avatar on Netflix. Evan made an Aang (the lead character) out of Plus Plus one day when he was bored because he didn’t have access to his devices.

One day we drove to a place called Paradise Country where Jo and the kids and Jen held koalas and then had a session learning about the animals. They are extremely cautious about “working” their koalas and individual animals work for 30 minutes or less a week. We learned that koalas are very picky eaters, only preferring the leaves of a small subset of eucalyptus trees of a certain age and species.

On Christmas Eve we went out for a very nice dinner and then we bowled. The next morning we went for a hike in the Burleigh Head National Park. And we went to see the new Star Wars movie.

A couple of days after Christmas we dropped Jen back at Brisbane airport for her flight back home and we turned our car southwards along the coast towards Sydney – our last destination in Australia almost a thousand kilometers away.

Catch-up time. Blog has fallen a month behind.

We arrived in Melbourne in the middle of December on a Sunday morning. It was one of those days when you arrive too early to check-in so you need to kill a few hours. But we’d woken up early in Fremantle, driven to Perth, and spent three hours on an airplane so we weren’t super chipper either. It was hard to find parking in downtown Melbourne, and driving wasn’t straightforward either because cars have to share the roads with trams (we don’t encourage that sort of behavior in Texas). We eventually parked and Jo found us the hippest breakfast joint – a place called Operator 25 in an old phone switchboard building but we had to wait a bit for a table. While the fam waited on a bench outside the restaurant I went for a short walk and discovered Queen Victoria market.

It is one of the biggest and busiest markets I’ve seen. I took Jo and the kids back there after breakfast. We strolled through the fresh food section and bought armloads of books at the used book stalls and realized that we had explored just a small fraction of the market.

A bustling market filled with all kinds a people is a good sign that a city is doing well. We still had plenty of time so we took our books and walked over to Flagstaff park. The park was full too. Families were grilling and celebrating birthdays. Kids swarmed the playground and Evan had to wait his turn at the swings. Vivian found an enormous tree to sit under and read. Eventually we drove to Brighton to our Airbnb but by then I had a good feeling about Melbourne.

Brighton looks like an old upscale neighborhood by the sea that had reached its prime a couple of decades ago. We walked from the Airbnb on a pleasant path along the beaches to the famous Brighton bathing boxes, a collection of beach huts from the 1900s.

But the sand was coarser and though we didn’t mind the beach a bit further down in Sandringham, we thought we liked our Western Australia beaches better. Yes, we are beach snobs.

A few days later Jen arrived. Our wine consumption promptly shot up. One day we drove up through the Yara valley to a very fancy winery for some nice wine and very overpriced terrible food.

Another thing we did in Brighton involved watching a lot of Netflix. Specifically, “Avatar, the Last Airbender”. Even if you aren’t into animated shows for kids you may have had the misfortune of seeing M Night Shyamalan’s really bad movie, The Last Airbender. Avatar is an animated show that inspired the movie and is a much better version of the movie. It ran for 3 seasons and is consistently rated among the top ten series ever. But why were we sitting in beautiful Brighton and watching it on Netflix ?

Back in Athens in late Fall we stayed at an Airbnb where the owner or previous resident had a Netflix account that was still accessible on the TV. Starting with Vivian we were all sick for 4 days. So we stayed in and started binge watching the Avatar. But then we left. At the next place in Greece we used our US based Netflix account but the Avatar wasn’t on it. Netflix pulled it from the US market some time back because it’s working on a live action version of the show to be released soon and probably doesn’t want to lose its potential audience to the older animated show.

So we’ve been on the prowl for a foreign Netflix app/login and found it in Brighton. To put the numbers in perspective, between 4 days in Athens and a week in Brighton, we watched about 60 forty-five minute long episodes. The kids loved it and Jo and I also thoroughly enjoyed it. Now family conversations are peppered with Avatar references. Don’t sulk like Prince Zuko. You’re as mean as Azula. Evan should get a haircut like Sokka. We left Brighton with all but the final four episodes left to watch.

Speaking of shows here’s a VR animation of Evan from the great science museum in Melbourne.

We enjoyed our time in the Melbourne area. Just like little old Austin consistently tops the list of cities to live in the US, Melbourne is often on top of the list of the most livable cities of the world. We can see why. Observation – there were zero homeless people (that we saw) and no one was panhandling at street corners. Question – how did they manage that ? It could be that Australia takes care of its destitute and mentally ill. Or they could just be better at hiding the problem. Either way, with the rising problem of homelessness in cities like San Francisco and Austin, it is worth asking. We did find little decals in public places where Melburnians apparently ask themselves how they want to live.

We didn’t spend enough time there to find out. A few days before Christmas we were at the airport in our way to another great Australian city, Brisbane.

Arjun’s mother passed away yesterday. We last saw her in November in Delhi.

I first met her sometime in the late 1980’s. I would stop for the night at their house in Delhi on my way from Austin to Hyderabad to visit my parents. Uncle would invite me for a drink, and the three of us would sit and chat in their living room.

Aunty would ask about my life as a young man in the US. She was like a judo sensei. She could gently, subtly, and without judgement use the force of my own thinking to send me in new directions and explore new ideas. Even back then I thought she was a remarkable lady.

Then Arjun was killed by a drugged motorist while riding his bicycle in Austin in 2006 leaving behind a daughter who was nine. Arjun’s parents were at an event in Michigan when they got the news that night. A pregnant Jo and I were in Florida visiting Aaron’s family. We met them at Arjun’s home the next morning along with other friends and family who were hastily arriving from everywhere.

We were shattered. Aunty, who had just lost her son was the calm pillar of strength. I went there to console her. Instead she consoled us all.

Guri Uncle has a hard time hearing on the phone these days so we chat using WhatsApp. Five word condolences and replies. I can sense his pain and loneliness. But he has taken up the mantle. In one text he said “Arun, this is life my dear fellow”.

When you spend all day every day with your kids you talk about the strangest things. A few days ago it was death. We were discussing our culture’s troubled relationship with death. I said that when someone dies we should celebrate their life. After all death is inevitable. Evan replied “but it’s okay to be sad because you’re never going to see that person ever again”. True.

We checked out the street art scene in Newtown and Katoomba in New South Wales. Pretty awesome. They even have a program that matches artists and property owners.