Travel with Indigo

I arrived back in Brisbane on September 5 and drove directly to the Hotel Palazzo Versace on the Gold Coast not knowing at the time that it would be my home for the next forty-seven days. As a longer stay customer during a slow season I managed to get a reduced room rate and get upgraded to their Imperial Suite, really a three room luxury apartment with kitchen. Though I didn’t care for its overly ornate Versace style, I have to say it was maybe the finest, most elegant hotel room I’ve ever seen, and the public spaces were no less exceptional. I got to know most of the highly competent and unfailingly cheerful and polite hotel staff, and with their help my stay there was about as pleasant an experience as it could possibly be.

During this time I drove often to the refit yard to check on the work progress, make a few critical decisions and generally try to move things along without ruffling feathers. I also spent some time learning more about the Gold Coast.  As I’ve said earlier, Main Beach is by a measure the best neighborhood on the GC and its Tedder Avenue is nicely landscaped and lined with generally good to excellent restaurants all with outdoor seating and a few bars and pubs. Best of all it’s just a ten minute walk from the hotel.

Broad Beach, where the casinos are found, has a few fine restaurants of which the best is Lauxes (sexual spelled backwards!), owned by Pete and JoJo Third with whom I became friends.  He is originally from a small town in New Zealand and she grew up on the GC. They spent the previous fifteen years owning and running restaurants in Nagoya, Japan of all places. Apart from these and a few others, including of course my hotel (the only decent hotel on the entire GC), there is not much to recommend the Gold Coast.  It has of course some very fine people and businesses, just not as many as you might hope to find. It certainly has more than its share of meretricious poseurs, wannabes, scam artists, common thugs, tarts and frauds. A lament I heard frequently from its better citizens is that too few people there have any “class”, by which they mean social and cultural refinement and integrity. From all I could tell, they’re right.

As an example, there is a notorious drug dealer living in Broad Beach who is a frequent and valued customer of Lauxes and its bar/restaurant. I’ve seen him there often with a sizeable entourage of local society, not including his two sons both of whom are currently serving lengthy prison sentences for beating a guy to death. Tattooed on the man’s neck above the collar line in bold, black, artless letters are the arresting words “Respect” on one side and “Revenge” on the other. Completing the picture of brazen malevolence, just above each of these is the black silhouette of a pistol. He seems to be quite the popular fellow in some social circles on the GC.

Just to be fair about it, I should also report on meeting two guys with considerable “class”, Sandy Barblett and his business partner Kevin Dart. Sandy is originally from Perth but more recently was an investment banker in London. Now he is a partner with Kevin in a private equity firm, Charter Pacific, based on the GC.  Sandy invited me to attend the annual blessing of the fleet at the Southport Yacht Club where he is a new member and where I joined him and his attractive wife, Lisa, for the festivities. He and Kevin joined me a few days later at a wine tasting for the purpose of selecting appropriate wines for Indigo’s cellar. During the coherent part of our conversation, before too many wines were sampled, it came out that Sandy is presently involved in a business deal in London with the world’s largest distributor of wines and spirits, Pernod Ricard, and that his prime contact there is a senior executive named Simon. By the most unlikely of circumstances, it happens that Simon is a brother of Indigo’s own Captain Watson!

When at long last the refit work was complete, we traveled down the Brisbane River, out into the ocean and south a bit to enter the inlet at Southport, then on to the Marina Mirage adjacent to the Versace Hotel, arriving there just in time for the annual fun fest called Indy Week.   Twenty-four Indy race teams are loaded into three 747s and flown to Brisbane, offloaded and trucked to the GC, where a winding road course has been created from the residential and commercial streets, grandstands have been erected and the infrastructure needed for three days of practice and racing has been put into place.

Race weekend itself is about the most Sybaritic, wild, drunken orgy you could possibly imagine, and so a whole lot of fun. Every hooker in Australia shows up and the balconies of the many high rise condos that line the race course are a full on (a favorite Aussie intensifier) live porn show. This year, according to the local newspaper, the cops decided that it was okay, though not encouraged, for ladies to flash their tits or even go topless, but public balcony oral sex would not be tolerated. Spectators, they said, should exhibit proper decorum. Yeah right, mate!

On the Saturday night of race weekend, I was seated at a dinner table with a group of twelve in a restaurant packed with tables of raucous people having just a fine old time. The adjoining bar and the crowds waiting to be seated were standing room only. Into this melee walked three twenty-something young guys clearly sloshed. First they yelled as loud as they could to gain the crowd’s momentary attention, then at just the right theatrical moment, they stripped all their clothes off, tucked their manhood between their legs and paraded around hooting and hollering, all to the joyful delight of the crowd. Shortly the security guys came over and gently escorted the boys outside.

It was during Indy week that we had on board five parties in six days, of which four ended not earlier than 3am and one went on until the sun came up. That stands as Indigo’s, as well as my own, record best for sustained celebration. A good time was had by all.