Maroochydore

Day 3 of our holiday was a Sunday. After leaving Narrabri we stopped at Moree for shopping and Inglewood for lunch, a picnic in the park. It was on the warm side, and a hungry family of magpies and honeyeaters of a type unfamiliar to me provided entertainment. I remembered stopping in the same park for lunch nearly 40 years earlier on a tour from Gatton college to the New England Tablelands.

The roads were quiet and the travelling leisurely till we passed Warwick and started the descent on the eastern side of the divide, where the traffic increased and the tone of it changed. Other drivers were more aggressive and less communicative and responsive to gesture and signal as it was apparent we were approaching a city. Into Brisbane along a large freeway we went, unsure where to exit to find the most expedient route to the Sunshine Coast which we had decided was our destination for that night.

Dark grey clouds massed mid afternoon as we inadvertently ended up in some hilly part of Brisbane searching for the main highway north. With perfect adverse timing the heavens opened and a gale blew up to a violent storm that proved to be the first of nine in the days to follow. These storms seemed to follow us but in fact they were localized yet widespread throughout SE Qld and north east NSW, and the pattern was for lovely calm sunny mornings which preceded a build up of heavy cloud after lunch culminating in an electrical show with booming thunder and torrential downpour late in the afternoon. Visibility was minimal as we eventually found the main road north. We turned off at Caboolture and nearly had our head on accident soon after as heavy impatient oncoming traffic returned to Brisbane after the weekend.

Badly shaken we continued, thinking Maroochydore would be a suitable overnight stop. We passed a few caravan parks and motels without stopping much to our regret later as Maroochydore was all built up high rise apartments and shopping precincts with no obvious place for late arrival overnighters to find accommodation. We eventually found a caravan park with a palatial restaurant at the front but it had no vacancy. It was now dark, we were tired and exasperated but had no choice but to drive about looking for a motel. We did find one at Mudjimba fortunately. The owner/manager was a most hospitable man who said our predicament was not uncommon in his experience. He was the only old fashioned motel around, most of the other motels had been razed and new high rises built necessarily to increase turnover to pay huge council rates. He suggested on hearing we were looking for a possible retirement place that we try the the Mary River Valley or Gympie where development had not yet reached and to buy in would be more affordable.

Lib, a great improviser with food, prepared a top meal with the microwave and our camping stocks as we watched the late news on TV showing the storm damage wreaked on Brisbane that day. It was washed down with good wine and we slept well until the noise of aeroplanes woke us early, an airport being nearby.

Maroochydore is much changed from the the seaside village described to me by Louise Bullen, a girl I went out with a couple of times more than forty years ago, who wrote to me from the camping ground after finishing her last year at Corowa CEGS and travelling there on her own to live in a one man tent for awhile and "find herself".  I do wonder what became of Louise. I hope she has had a good life and is in good health.