QUEENSLAND FUN

I've been pleasantly surprised by the good times had so far during the Queensland segment of my trip. It's not that I have anything against the place per se, but I haven't lived here since 1998 and only ever return to fulfill family obligations (not known for being too stimulating) so I had extremely low expectations for the trip. Which means of course it wouldn't be hard to exceed those expectations.

It takes much more than 9 years of absence to erase the memory of a muggy, humid, energy-sapping, sweaty, dripping, stinking hot Central Queensland summer, so I was pleased that the temperature in the Sunshine Coast was quite reasonable (I've since learned that this has been the coldest Christmas season in a decade). My journey began with a few days spent relaxing there at my sister's house, and many of those days were overcast, drizzly and delightfully warm which suited me perfectly.

Less enjoyable was the six and a half hour drive up to Rockhampton that I endured along with my two younger sisters and future brother-in-law. That's a long time to be stuck in a metal shell. With ANYONE. One perk was that my (non-driving) sister's bladder is even more demanding than mine - a fact which anyone who's ever been out on the piss with me will find quite unbelievable - so there were plenty of toilet stops on the way that were not initiated by yours truly. We finally arrived in Rock Vegas around 10:30pm and the evening was spent drinking beer and catching up with my younger brother and the folks.

We had only two full days to spend up here and the time has passed pleasantly, likely due to the fact that I've spent the majority of my waking hours each day OUTSIDE the festering hell-hole that is Rockhampton. (I've decided I'm too old to be polite about the place. It really stinks). On Saturday we set off in my brother's four wheel drive to Five Rocks, a beautiful beach in the Byfield National Park area north of Rockhampton. Unfortunately the huge sand dunes we needed to traverse to get there defeated us, so we went instead to Stony Creek for some swimming and soccer-ball-kicking action. It was so nice. It's the first time I'd jumped in a natural body of water since the Greek sailing trip and it felt gooood.

Saturday night I caught up with some old friends, one of whom I haven't seen since high school (Facebook! Hooray!), which was really cool but also a little scary. My travelling tendencies have seen me live in seven different cities in four different countries over the past five years alone, which means I'm rarely around people who've known me for more than a couple of years. The girl I met up with was a good friend at school, and she reminded me of some of the questionable decisions I made about how to spend my teenage years. Still, I wouldn't be the super-fabulous, wonderful ray of sunshine I am now without that brief skid off the rails as a teen :-)

We're driving this morning down to Bargara to meet up with the rest of the clan for our Christmas extravaganza. And speaking of dodginess from Christmases past reminds me that one cousin in particular has a lot of embarrassing ammunition about childhood choreography to very crap pop songs. I think I can still remember most of the moves to our rendition of Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now". Thank god there were no digital cameras in the eighties.