Travellers Guide

My Australian Holiday

I have been travelling to Australia every year for many years but this is the first time for many years that I have travelled without my wife Margaret and I have been able to do what I want to do and when I want to do it which is lots of sleeping.  The reason Margaret and I have always chosen Australia as our holiday place is because our youngest daughter Sharyon married a Kiwi born Aussie with a bit of dutch blood and the live in Berwick in Victoria. Sharyon and her husband Dr Pieter Van Dijk both work at the Monash University in Berwick. Pieter is a senior Lecturer and deputy head of the Business and Economic facility and Sharyon is an administration assistant in the marketing department. They have 2 teenage sons Joshua and Samual who attend the Maratha Christian School in Endeavour Hills. Both boys are keep on sport and every winter when I come to Melbourne I have to try and learn the game Aussie rules. Everyone stares at me when yell out from the sideline that it was a  forward pass and a knock on.

Promotion of the Area
Berwick and Beaconsfield are two small townships in the southern suburbs of Melbourne. Berwick is administered by a local Government area known as the City of Casey. Beaconsfeild is only a few ks down the road and it’s governed by the Cardinia Shire Council.  Many people are choosing to live near these 2 towns because they are handy to the train and bus service, they have very good public and private schools and sports facilities. I asked at the Berwick library if there was any tourist organisation appointed to promote the area and they told my there was no such organisation.
There are not a lot of websites promoting these 2 small towns and I gathered several business cards from business owners and very few had their email address on their business card. We are now living in age of the computer and despite the billions of dollars being spent by governments in providing faster broadband the education needed to convince business owners that their very survival will depend on the use of the computer to sell their goods and services.

It’s becoming a small world
5 Years ago I started  a company called Timaru Promotions Ltd and built a website. There are now 8 websites all linked to the one website and each town has its own online business phone book. Christchurch,  Timaru, Oamaru, Dunedin and Invercargill. While it it is good to have a locally online phone book it is only seen by those who searching information about the area online. Our idea is to now put in those phone books contact details of business in other towns and countries. We have taken the contact details of some Berwick and Beaconsfield businesses in Australia and put them into 6 online phone books in New Zealand.