Well it’s all over now.
Let me tell you it was the hardest money I’ve ever earned in my life. I cleared 80,000 for 10 days work less than two thirds of what I normally make for the same period of work with tripple the hours and months of preperation.
On the tour side, it was very successful.
We stayed 5 days at an excellent farmstay near Beaudesert about 100km inland from Brisbane. The facilities, food, and activities were excellent for kids and put a tear of nostalgia in my eye. They had horse riding, excellent trails, picnics and camp fires every day with billy tea, cricket and tennis. The kids were well fed and wrecked by 9pm so they were in bed early. The weather here was cool to cold at night but we had a stove in the house which I lit at about 6 every night after chopping the wood. Jesus who’d of thought I’d ever split another gate post.
Then I rented a 1.5 million dollar property in Broadbeach Waters with its own private beach and jetty. The house was spectacular and had a beautiful, functional kitchen area. This is where I really had to pull the finger out. I was up cooking breakfasts for 12 at 6am, making sure the laundry was done, scheduling the days activities, dolling out money, checking walkie-talkies were functioning, getting the kids in the bus, driving the bus, watching them like a hawk through Movie World, Sea World, at the beach and Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. Then I took them home where I’d cook dinner for 12 whilst they had showers, played on the x-box or wrote their diaries.
There was no call for additional activities as it turns out there was simply too much to do.
The kids had a wouderful time, I had an exhausting, but happy time of it.
I didn’t have any trouble at customs. Brisbane airport is nothing like Sydney. It is a pretty casual kind of affair. The Quantas ques, however, were long and you’d have to ask yourself why anyone would want to travel on a terorrist target ship.
Would I do it again? That’s the million dollar question and if it paid something like that I might consider it. I originally planned it just to see what was involved and what I could learn from it. I feel like I learned a hell of a lot. It was long in the planning and well executed, but not profitable. I’d have to ask for a lot more money next time.