If we didn’t already know it, here’s more testimony, from some very well traveled foreign visitors to Central Florida, that The Villages is a phenomenal place to live.
Carole and Frederick Waring, from Queensland, Australia, recently visited The Villages, and stayed a while with two Villages families they had met on recent holidays. They met one Villages couple while on holiday in New Zealand and the other folks on a cruise traversing remote regions of South America’s penguin country.
Being RV enthusiasts, the Warings had driven around their own vast continent several times with their son and daughter in their younger years. They’ve been to all seven continents since retiring fifteen years ago, including Africa, several trips to Asia, and Antarctica. They arrived in Miami in mid-July after a week in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) and a ten-day stint in the United Kingdom. Once on American shores, they hired a small lorry (SUV) and drove — on the wrong side of the road, for them — to the Florida Keys. After their third visit to the Orlando theme parks — this time to Epcot and Discovery Cove — they arrived in our community.
Although this was the Aussies’ sixth trip ‘to the States,’ American traffic patterns, especially roundabouts and complex highway branches, still required their extra vigilance. “We used our feet and taxis to get around South Beach (Miami),” Fred said, “because that traffic is crazy…and it helped that our next sojourn was to the Keys. It’s hard to make wrong turns on that long narrow highway — so that stretch helped get us back to the mindset of driving on the American side of the road again.”
Fred had owned a ‘crush shop’ (auto body and fender repair business) and described his vocation as a ‘panel beater’ and ‘dent knocker’ — Aussie lingo for hammering car crash damage. While the Warings retired near Brisbane, on Australia’s gold coast, with temperate climate most of the year, they had previously lived near Darwin, in the Northern Territories, with a tropical climate similar to Florida. It’s a bit disorienting to remember that everything ‘down under’ is topsy-turvy to our American way of thinking — one travels northward to find warmer weather; and storm winds and toilet water swirl in the opposite direction to ours.
“Australia is beautiful,” Carole said, “but we have a much smaller total population than the United States. We have only about 25 million people living along our coasts. Most of the outback is not habitable.” She was quick to mention their lethal spiders, droughts and dust storms, incredibly hot weather some summers and problems with solar radiation. “We call it ‘slip, slather and slide,'” Carole said, describing instructions given to Australian school kids to prevent skin cancer. “Slip on your hat, slather on the sunscreen and slide on your long-sleeved shirt.” They took cold bottles of water in their rental car in a ‘chilly bin,’ their name for the small soft-sided cooler they brought.
“The old car show was amazing,” Fred said, referring to our Cruise In on Spanish Springs town square. “We have some terrific ones in Australia too. I’ve refurbished a number of old wrecks in my shed, but I can’t believe you folks do this once every month.” The Warings caught the last performance of the Four Divo with Fernando Varela, and loved the “young spirit of the senior audience” at the Savannah Center. “Most people in The Villages are about our age,” Carole said, “but hardly anybody seems elderly.” After visiting a few regional rec centers and perusing the listing of Villages clubs and activities, Carol described The Villages as ‘mind boggling.’ “I would have a difficult time choosing what to do if I lived here,” she said. “There are almost too many choices.”
As a veteran of Australian military service, Fred was in awe of the donated memorabilia and sheer size of the new Eisenhower Rec Center. They loved the nautical motif at Lake Miona and country flavor at Mulberry Grove. “These places are decorators’ dreams,” Carole said. “They’ve come up with so many ideas to differentiate these ‘palaces.'” They enjoyed a nature photography exhibit at the Savannah Center, Villages artists’ work displayed at La Hacienda Center, and listened to informal bluegrass and band rehearsals here and there. They caught a Thursday ‘Irish Pub Night’ at Cane Garden Restaurant; sat outside for lunch at the Lighthouse Grille and enjoyed swimming before thunderclouds moved in several afternoons.
The Warings had looming reservations in Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, North Carolina, along their trek to JFK airport for the long flight home in August — but they really didn’t want to leave The Villages. “Even though summer weather is steamy, we can understand why you are so happy,” Fred said. “People are very friendly, and you have just about everything you can ever want here.”
