Thanks to the inclement weather and the inability to fly I needed to adjust my plans. Rather than hangin’ around in the hangar I decided to make another run for Brisbane and on learning that Mary was fully recovered looking forward to our previously postponed dinner.

To the accompaniment of thunder and lightening we went to the Howard Smith Wharf precinct on the Brisbane river under the Storey bridge and I needed to make a serious readjustment to my thirty year outdated perceptions of “BrisVegas”. It’s come a long way and is now a much more sophisticated and cosmopolitan city than I remembered, (although my perceptions may have been slightly influenced by the fact this was the first major city I’d been in for the past two months). Great venue and great night!

We had a delicious meal and fantastic catch up complete with special effects provided by God!

Over dinner I mentioned I’d passed on going to Point Lookout on my previous visit which was challenged by Jerry who said North Stradbroke (Straddie to the locals) is one of their favourite weekend getaways and you can get there for $10 on the passenger ferry and the regular bus service will get you wherever you want to go for a $1. This combined with a better weather forecast for the following day convinced me to again change plans and give it a go, and I’m glad I did!

It’s strange that after a half hour ferry trip across the muddy waters of Moreton Bay you arrive at North Straddi which has a completely different feel to the mainland, more like the laid back ramshackle vibe of Fiji, with the added bonus of some beautiful clear water beaches and incredibly friendly wildlife. The other piece of good advice Mary gave me was to try the legendary prawn rolls from the Prawn Shack. Again great advice!

After spending the night in Cleveland I awoke to bucketing rain on Saturday and spent it in the library trying to catch up with my blogs and being entertained by a Maori choir? In the afternoon I got a text from Lloyd saying the weather forecast for Gympie and K’gari was looking good for Sunday and if I was around we should be able to get a flight in. I checked the weather forecast and it looked like there was a two day window of sunny weather before a week of further rain. I confirmed I’d meet him at the hangar the following morning and headed north again that evening stopping at Wild Horse Mountain for a view of the cloud draped Glasshouse Mountains and dinner and a few tunes at the Yandina pub. On arrival at the hangar I noticed a full moon struggling through the clouds which meant, according to my new mandate, it was time to lose the goatee and not look like every other grey nomad for a few weeks at least!

As predicted the morning arrived bright and sunny and Lloyd arrived shortly thereafter. We had an amazing morning initially flying up to Sandy Cape, then following the east coast of K’gari making a quick detour inland to Lake McKenzie and on to revisit Rainbow Beach and Double Island Point arriving back at the hangar by 10.30am. Many thanks to Lloyd for a couple of fantastic days (refer to previous “Travelers Tales” blog “Adventures with Captain Lloyd”).

Noticing that the following day (Monday) was also forecast to be fine before the rain set in I booked the 7.00am ferry to Tangalooma and headed back to Brisbane, via Redcliff which I had never visited before and which, based on Cleveland I expected to be better than it was.

As it was a 6.30am check in for the ferry I decided to overnight outside the ferry terminal which proved to be a mistake. Little did I realise the roads around the docks became a drag strip after midnight and I was trying to sleep in the midst of revving engines, squealing tyres and blue smoke. Needless to say it wasn’t a restful night but I survived which wasn’t always guaranteed during the night time goings on.

The ferry trip takes about an hour and a half of which the first hour is spent travelling at about 6 knots down the muddy Brisbane river passing all manner of rusty hulks loading who know what and boxy looking ships, with the aesthetics of a floating parking station delivering thousands on new cars from China, Japan, South Korea or Thailand (take your pick). Finally, once clear of the river the ferry accelerated to about 35 knots and half an hour later we arrived at Tangalooma.

I’d been there once before about twenty three years ago when my wife was heavily pregnant with our son and the resort as I remembered is still there but has been overwhelmed more recent extensions all which lack the character of the original buildings and have about as much aesthetic appeal as the car ships we’d passed on the way out.

As if this wasn’t disappointing enough when I checked in at the activities desk they advised me the advertised half day excursion to Cape Moreton lighthouse wasn’t running that day, evidently the fine print said they needed a minimum of six passengers and only had four! As you can imagine what I lacked in sleep from the night before I made up for in attitude and after a fairly direct conversation with the Activities Manager the only suggestion he could offer was to take the helicopter. Easy for him to say, but I hadn’t budgeted on this. What to do, again a case of so near and yet so far!

After looking for any other options and finding none I spoke with the helicopter company and they had the flight I needed with a spare seat scheduled for 2.30pm which worked well as I needed to catch the 4.00pm ferry back to Brisbane. While the morning was fairly overcast the afternoon cleared up and I decided to bite the bullet and book the flight which proved to be the right call. The flight was fantastic, not only did I get to see the Cape Moreton lighthouse as a bonus I also got to see dolphins, manta rays, dugongs and sharks coexisting in the translucent turquoise waters. Worth every one of the $ 297 it cost!

No sooner had I arrived back in Brisbane than the forecast rain set in. Remembering how much I’d enjoyed the elevation and mountain air of Maleny I decided to head for Tamborine Mountain, another place I’d never been to but heard about. This also proved to be a worthwhile diversion as the bleak weather didn’t detract from the beauty of the place and somehow seem appropriate when I went for a memorable walk through the stunning rain forest to visit Curtis Falls. The town itself was very cool, both temperature wise and visually combining classic Queensland country town architecture with some newer funkier additions, like a 1950’s styled US diner complete with red vinyl booths and an a Wurlitzer jukebox for example, not to mention the Bearded Dragon pub and the Dog Food Dude pet food store!

My final port of call in Queensland was appropriately enough to stay with my old mate from back in the ’80’s Wayne and his new partner Keree. We have shared more than a few of life’s up’s and down’s and after spending about thirty years trying to make sense of Sydney he returned to his native Gold Coast about five years ago and has never looked back. Despite the fact he won too many steaks and bottles of red from me due to my misguided State of Origin bets, we remain firm friends and it’s always good to catch up and even better since I’ve become an honorary Queenslander at SOO time.

Appropriately enough the last thing I did in Queensland was to visit the appropriately named Point Danger light. This strange edifice straddles the border between Queensland and NSW and can’t seem to make up it’s mind if it’s a lighthouse or a monument to Captain Cook. It was opened on 17th May, 1970 to commemorate the sighting and naming by the said captain exactly 200 years earlier and despite it’s very 70’s brutalist architecture I’ve completely changed my mind and now like it both physically and for what it represents, especially as the designers had identified Queensland as being on the “dark side” (a very NSW prejudice and one I might need to rethink after spending the past 10 weeks in God’s country).