Grantham and Hossam

The beautiful, large home.

Hossam and Aliya.

Interesting signpost in Toowoomba.

Aliya, Trisha and Hossam in the Picnic Point Restaurant.

The view.

Monday, January 2^nd

Today I had arranged to visit another of my friends from my world tour trip. When I went through Egypt right after the revolution I traveled with an Intrepid tour. The guide was Hossam and there were only three people in the group, two English sisters who kept to themselves and me. So I got to know Hossam quite well over the two weeks. He was a great guide and quite positive about the changes that he hoped the revolution would make in Egypt. He thought at the time that the country was turning a corner in a positive more democratic direction. However, it didn't turn out that way and the tourist industry dried up and he was out of work. I had located him on Linkedin and kept in contact with him and when I came to Australia I found he was married and living west of Brisbane. So I contacted him and said I would visit him at the end of my year as I headed home through Brisbane.

I drove the scenic back route through the rural area to get to the town of Grantham. This is a very small remote village. I found Hossam's house up on high ground. It was obviously a very new house. Hossam introduced me to his wife Trisha and their 10 month old girl Aliya.

We talked for a while about how Sam (his new Australian name) came to meet Trisha (on one of his tours a couple of years after I was there) and his journey from Egypt to Australia. He talked about the latent racism that is here and his struggles to find work in the tourist industry, despite the fact that he had won an award as 2^nd best travel guide in the world as voted by Intrepid tourists, because he didn't have a degree in tourism.

Then they drove me further west to Toowoomba. This is the largest inland city in Australia, other than Canberra the capital, which is pretty amazing when you consider the country is over 4000 kilometres across and Toowoomba is only 180 kilometres from the coast. There is a stat that says 90% of Canadians live within a hundred kilometres of the American border. I think it is also probably true that 90% of Australians live within a hundred kilometres of the coast.

This is the town where Trisha went to school and university (and explained to me how he wound up here). They told me about the flood of January 9, 2011 when torrents of rain water run off overwhelmed a dam in Toowoomba and rushed down the valley to the sea wiping out a large part of Grantham killing about a dozen people, including the wife and three kids of a man who was out helping to save other people. There are videos on YouTube of cars and houses being washed away.

We drove up to the Picnic Point Restaurant which sits on top of a hill that commands a view all the way to the ocean (on a clear day). They treated me to a great meal as we continued to talk and swap stories and remembrances.

Then we drove back to their house. They drove me around and explained how the families that were washed out were not allowed to rebuild and given land on higher ground to avoid a similar disaster in the future. We talked about their life in Grantham. Trisha works locally and her parents live a half hour away. Sam has secured a job as a refugee settlement counselor because although he didn't have the qualifications, they wanted him because he was the only applicant who could speak Arabic, and the people he would be working with are from Darfur. He has a three year contract. So they decided to settle in Grantham where they could buy a lot of land for $80000 and built a great house on it. As they said they can afford a larger place and a better living style than living in a large city.

I had a great visit and but had to drive back before it got too dark. When I left it started raining and soon became pretty torrential. I took the more direct route straight back to Brisbane and then up to the Sunshine Coast to Coloundra. The rain stopped when I got to Brisbane and then the driving was easier.

When I got back I called Sam to say I had arrived safely and he called the next morning and told me they had received 72mm of rain overnight (more than the previous month total) and that the dry, dead grass we trod on in his backyard was now green and alive!