Subject: Hello from Gold Coast, Australia
Hello Ziners,

We rejoined as TheTravelzine having had wonderful experiences and tremendous help and advice previously. From 1975, when John was working as Airline Staff, we enjoyed some fabulous trips to USA and Canada, travelling with our 2 little girls from the age of 10 mths old. He was made redundant in 1981 and we moved full-time into our own small business. We've had a number of trips since, attending several trade conventions in the US. In 1999 we travelled to Seattle for the wedding of our first daughter, now 30! As she is well settled there we are looking forward to continuing trips between US and Australia. In fact, I am currently in the process of lifting my qualifications to enable Nursing Registration in the US. This has meant, at the tender age of 59, returning to study at University!! But as we love North America it will be a small price to pay to have the freedom to live and work in either Hemisphere!

In 2002 we had a fabulous trip which came out of winning a package of 6 nights TransAtlantic crossing in the QE2. Went London/Southampton/QE2/New York/Vancouver/Seattle. We had a wonderful "tour guide" in London, in the person of "Peter", an Aussie, whom we'd "met" through TheTravelzine. Our computer crashed not long after that, and we lost all our emails. Hopefully we'll be able to track him down again now. If you read this, Peter, we'd love to hear from you. We have some great photos!!

In 2003 I had an amazing trip, as a Nursing escort taking a spinal patient on a luxury 737 from Gold Coast to Los Angeles, travelling on to Seattle to visit again with our daughter.

Coming up, in October, we have another "prize winning" trip, having won airfares and 5 nights at the Padmar in Kota, Bali. We look forward to some wonderful advice from Travelziners on what to do and where to go in Bali on a budget, to maximize the experience!

We've missed the wealth of information from this group over the last 3 years. We've not rejoined sooner because of workload, necessitating disciplined time on computer. As Travelziners we need the luxury of time to ingest the wealth of the experiences of others as they share the joys and woes of their journeys.

John had a stroke 12 months ago, so now he will become the active Travelziner/trip planner while I'm out earning the wherewithal for us to travel.

We look forward to the Zine emails!

John and Margot Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia