Month: August 2013

When Sydney and the bush meet now
There is antipathy
And fashionable suburbs float
at night, far out to sea

Aussie bush poet Les Murray is well conversant with this most iconic of Australian cities. We’ve been here but 48 hours with Julie and Graham in this charismatically wonderful metropolis; lunch at the country club in Terrey Hills, dinners in Chatswood (Terrazza) and North Ryde (Stanford Hotel) and a lazy afternoon at Mooney Mooney workers club on the Hawkesbury river. However, we do admit that Dr Moseley’s diet and fasting method has been put on hold until we get home.
Pictures are not all that good, but we have had a terrific time as we usually do with Julie and Graham.
Sydney sandstone, pretty as a picture, boats bobbing at Bobbin Head, trying to keep fingers off the lens and Julie and Graham’s new home nearing completion at The Landings.

Like the man on the Boston subway.
No! He never returned and his fate is still unlearned!
Similarly, this morning, we took a right turn off the Captain Cook highway into Palm Cove.
And they never returned, no they never returned and their fate is still unlearned
Last blog pictures of the beach, the 3rd floor verandah and lunch.

We had lunch in the gardens cafe yesterday with the Howes and as it was showery then, we went back today to find a feast of flowers and exotic tropical plants.

In an earlier post I said the last time I was in Townsville was 25 years ago (a guess!) for yesterday in Cairns we met up with Dennis and Valerie Howe, who moved here 26 years ago.
Not a bad guess eh?
Therefore it really was quarter of a century since I have been to Queensland’s north, catching up with then self confessed ‘drop-outs’ from the down south fast lane.
Dennis as the boss of Skywest Airlines was my first PR client, until he moved to Sydney to run East West Airlines and fairly quickly he got head-hunted to be number 2 at Australian Airlines. But the culture shock of life at the former TAA and the spotted bow tie types, soon had them beat a hasty retreat to seek a new life in idyllic Cairns.
They have had a number of very successful businesses here in the tropics and now live in a halcyon, picturesque and bucolic part of the city which is a gem.

An idyllic locale on the northern Queensland coast; Mission Beach cosseted between mountains and Dunk Island in the Coral Sea and ours for a couple of nights.
We spent an entire day of the first floor verandah of our unit, buying all our grub for 2 days from the local Woolies, which allowed us the chance to spend all our time reading books and looking at the sea, while keeping an eye out for a stray Cassowary.
Since Hervey Bay we have traversed mile upon mile of sugar cane territory and near Tully bananas joined the mix. Simply magic!
And now we are on the road to Cairns, the tropics and perchance to hone our geography skills; Innisfail isn’t in North Queensland is it?
You bet it is!
Just ask the man in the big white hat. This area is the personal fiefdom of the member for Kennedy, big Bob Katter MP and the town is in two parts, old heritage and the newer Coles and Woolies which attracts opportunistic surrounding businesses and natty ring-road systems that makes any town expand.
Cairns, our ultimate destination on this journey, soon emerged and upon entering the city the navigator was on a rather protracted phone call to Allison, so driver instinct and intuition directed us straight to the Pacific International Hotel and our room on the 8th floor that is too big, even for a picture on the iPad.
We walked a fair bit of the CBD last night, with dinner up town and today we drove out to Kuranda and bumped into bent’ n ‘ twisted, Peter Jaensch, from the Galleria Markets, who now resides in this all-embracing market village.