Well with that resume you wouldn't really be needing much storytelling about Oz but you'd probably drop dead at what Surfers has become these days. It's terribly built up, high-rise after high-rise, over-priced shops in a crowded plaza, traffic congestion, a huge casino just off in Broadbeach, drug trafficking, etc. It's still a beautfiul place to visit but even in my lifetime it feels like a different place altogether, like it isn't real but a facade. The entire South-East corner is really just a metropolis now, stretch north into the Sunshine Coast all through Brisbane, and over the border to the Tweed Heads. Even the hinterlands around the Gold Coast like Tambourine Mountain have become tourtist hotspots pricing out the locals. What used to be a sleepy hidden town in paradise is now another tourist trap. It's all depressing really, how crowded and 'big' Australia is becoming, it's losing a lot of local charm to commericalisation, and it only gets worse everytime I go home. I miss it everyday however and now I'm getting all worked up, feeling trapped in a winter-hell of Chicagoland.