J L Cracknell

Vision in Conflict J L 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. With the family's move to a farm on Queensland's Gold Coast a whole new lifestyle began. Surfer's Paradise 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. It was the ideal time and place to build Australia's first private university, Bond University, with Alan Bond who had recently won the America's Cup and been named Australian of the Year. This is an American'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 21st century. The dream and success of Bond University became part of the melting pot of destiny of the new Australia.