There are moments and places that call out for your soul to return (especially when you wake to an air temperature of minus 36!!!)

Everyone who has known the joy of travel can name that “happy little foreign town,” where you danced and laughed and fell in love with a place that made your soul feel like it had finally found its home. It’s the place you find find your mind going back to time and again, and for a very lucky few, you actually do get to return.

Often it’s the town not mentioned in Lonely Planet; the one you found when you got off the bus at the wrong stop, or the car broke down, or you shared a hostel room with someone who had just come from there. It’s the restaurant without a sign, the bar tucked away in a back alley, the deserted beach at the end of an overgrown footpath.

For Greg that place is Mooloolaba, a beach town just north of Brisbane where the Mooloolah River meets the Coral Sea. It was here in 1983 that Greg and Neal, fresh out of the College of Engineering and at the beginning of their Down Under tour, met three Aussies (Al, Dale, Deb) who would offer them a house to stay in and friendship that has lasted 30 years.

Twenty years later Greg would fulfill a promise to himself and return to Australia with his family in tow and revisit many of the places he loved. Including this quintessential Australian swimming hole (Al and Dale in 1983 on the left, Greg and his boys in 2003)

Ten years after that epic family adventure, Greg and Lucas would return again in the fall of 2012. For Greg it was to complete the goals of the international Engineering Fellowship in Asset Management that he had been awarded. For Lucas it was a gift to celebrate his graduation from high school. A second generation created their own memories as Lucas and Deb’s three girls pose under the same waterfall their parents had played in.

And that second generation continues to connect. This past December Dale’s son Ashley entertained Greg’s niece Mackenzie – putting her up in their home and showing her all that Mooloolaba has to offer – including a trip to the famous swimming hole… 

So I believe it’s true – you can go home again. Whether it’s to the home of your childhood or the place your soul found and claimed as home. And someday I fully expect that Lucas will be standing by that swimming hole with his son or daughter – and a third generation of Chartier’s will discover magical, beautiful Mooloolaba.