≡ PDF Vision in Conflict eBook JL Cracknell

Vision in Conflict eBook JL Cracknell

Download As PDF : Vision in Conflict eBook JL Cracknell

In 1970, an American teacher moved to Sydney to her adopted country and her new Australian love, Walter Cracknell, a QANTAS employee. They married and had two daughters and Jo Anne, the brash Yankee, embarked on a program that was to change some deeply engrained attitudes in this male-dominated society.
While she loved the lifestyle, the beauty of the country, the people and their unique sense of humor, there were some subtle conflicts between her free California upbringing and her newly adopted country. She introduced an American fitness program called Jazzercise to Australian women, bringing them out of the kitchen with a new self-confidence. The impact on the women of the seaside suburb of Clontarf on Sydney’s North Shore spread across the nation and gave birth to a daily TV show incorporating health, fitness and tourism.
In 1980 the family moved to the Gold Coast of Queensland where it was “beautiful one day, perfect the next.” The Coast, with its enviable country lifestyle, was the fastest growing region in Australia, yet had no university for its high school graduates. Jo Anne and Wally worked with Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Premier of Queensland, to convince the region that this was the ideal time and the Coast the perfect place to build Australia’s first private university with Alan Bond who had recently won the America’s Cup and been named Australian of the Year.
The Gold Coast was alive with an entrepreneurial spirit and the millionaire developers and investors flocked to the area. The “White Shoe Brigade” took advantage of the climate, the population growth and the wealth to take enormous risks in building such iconic features as Sea World, Sanctuary Cove Resort and Dreamworld.
This is an American/Australian’s look at the visions in conflict with the culture of the time and how the risk takers grabbed at opportunities to usher in changes to the laws and university traditions. It is a funny but hard look at a culture trying to hurdle economic oblivion in the 1980’s and 1990’s and a region that embraced new dreams to take Australia into the next century. The dream and success of Bond University became part of the melting pot of destiny of the new Australia.