Pulling the chain and other puerile joys

This morning at my Mum's house I found - finally! - my photo album from my first visit to Tasmania 11 years ago. I went there with a friend I'll call The Photographer. We spent ages seeking out perfect locations and framing our shots and the album is a stunner, even if I say so myself. Postcard photos!

Mixed in with the postcard shots of heavenly scenery are the pics of us having fun.

In one photo, I am balancing a chamber pot on my head. You'll be pleased to know it's empty. (Unfortunately my computer can't read the CD it's stored on, which is a bit of a worry and something I'll have to sort, otherwise you'd see it here in all its glory.)

I have always found chamber pots to be a wonderful source of amusement. I have a very advanced sense of toilet humour, which was the bane of my grandmother's existence when I was a girl. She wanted me to be A Lady. I wanted to be a tomboy.

My grandparents didn't have an indoor toilet until some time in the early 1970s, so my early childhood memories of staying there for holidays involved chamber pots. There was always one under the bed, as nobody wanted to head down to the back yard and the unlit outdoor dunny in the pitch black of night. If you needed a pee in the middle of the night, you squatted carefully over the pot. Even more carefully the next morning you took it through the house and down the back yard and tipped it into the loo. Or Mum did. Hilarious as I thought chamber pots were, the sight and smell of a semi-full one was a bit too much for me.

As for the outdoor dunny, it was a gem. The walls were of fibro, the roof of corrugated iron. The door had a gap top and bottom so the light could get in. The bog roll was on a hook that was always a little rusty. My grandparents lived by the sea.

My cousins and I used to delight in peeking under the door and teasing whoever was sat on the seat (which was made of utilitarian black plastic).

Best of all, it had a chain flush. A proper old-fashioned chain with a black bakelite handle which released a thunderous fall of water from the cistern near the roof. Pulling the chain was very satisfying - you'd give it a damned good tug, release it and watch it fly roofwards -  and one of the things I missed when the indoor toilet was installed, as its cistern was conventionally behind the seat and it flushed quietly with a discreet little button.

You don't see chain flush toilets much anymore. My other grandmother had one too in her old house in Clovelly. It was an inside toilet next to the scullery, on the covered in back porch.

At the primary school I went to chain flush toilets were still in place in the 60s and 70s. The newest school building, built in the 1960s, featured chain flushes. In the girls' loo there were two rows of toilets from memory, and it was a good game to have a race to see who could dash into each cubicle and pull the chain down the row of loos. Even better, you'd wait until someone was sat down, climb silently into the cubicle next door, reach over and pull as quickly as you could, trusting you wouldn't be seen by the unlucky girl who just got a wet bum.

This year's Tassie photos don't feature any chamber pots - but I did spy one in an antique shop and, looking at the price, wish we'd kept my grandparents'! I didn't encounter a chain flush toilet either, although I'm sure many still exist, hidden on farms and in older houses. If the chain flush toilet still exists in any number, it will exist in Tassie, my heart tells me.

Paradise may have its serpents, but it still appeals

Outside it's raining; it's blowing on the windows and on the seemingly endless row of neighbours' roofs. My glimpse of the sky is cut into segments by terracotta tiles and brickwork. I feel closed in, in a way I didn't feel for ten days earlier this month.

I've been in Paradise, you see. Godzone Country. In other words, Tasmania. In this underpopulated island there are big skies. When it rains, you can see the rain approaching for many kilometres. Even in Hobart and Launceston, the world is on a human scale and you still get the sense of space and sky.

It's even better in the country. We stayed by the sea in Bicheno for a few days, watching the weather change kilometres away and the seas turn from dead calm to white horses to waves crashing against the shore and up through the blowhole. It rained - it poured! - but somehow that didn't matter. We chucked on our raincoats and headed to the shore to watch nature at work. Who cared if it was only 13 degrees with summer a fortnight away? Not us. I prefer cool climate holidays to tropical islands anyway.

We stayed in Ross, in the midlands, where the river had broken its banks, creating a wide blue pond that reflected the wide blue sky. Around us the hills were green and gentle. Tassie has had a very wet winter and spring, and the island is rejoicing in it. Lushness everywhere.

We were snowed on at Mt Wellington near Hobart. From the top of Mt W you get, if the mountain isn't in cloud, a superb view of Hobart itself. Our time there was limited so we took a chance and drove up, passing joggers and cyclists who clearly had masochistic tendencies. Higher and higher, until little blobs of snow sat at the side of the road. I was excited. I love snow. What I didn't expect was that before we would reach the summit the weather would turn and we would be caught in a snowfall. Not a heavy one, but enough to make me pull on hats and gloves, laugh and stand in it, catching snowflakes on my tongue. Beside me a family of tourists were clearly unprepared for the weather and stood in shorts, skimpy tops and flip-flops, shivering for the camera.

As quickly as it started the snow stopped, and we were wreathed in cloud with crunchy white stuff underfoot.  Driving down the mountain Hobart reappeared when we slipped below the cloud base, dotted along the riverbanks on either side of the Derwent. It's a town that looks at peace with its environment; not too encroaching, with the only blot being the high rise Wrest Point Casino at Sandy Bay.

Launceston is even nicer in that regard, with heritage buildings - none over six stories - and a friendly feel; ten minutes' drive and you're out of town and in the country, with spring all around you, exuberant with wild colour. The road winding beside the Tamar gives you panoramic vistas. Launceston isn't a blot on the landscape, there is no pall of smog hanging over it - or Hobart come to that. You know it's there, behind those hills, but it has a kind footprint.

Our final few days were with G's family in a remote spot down the side of the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, near Gordon, a one horse village whose one horse was probably a Shetland pony.  The Cousin lives on 5 acres outside town, up on a hill with the Channel visible through the gum trees. There's some space around the property for fire protection, and the farmlet is home to native chooks, goshawks, possums and the odd tiger snake. The bloke next door has set up a rescue home for retired racehorses, but in a very minor way; he only has half a dozen as that's all he can support. The Cousin is building a veggie and fruit garden and is going to enclose it in chicken wire because of the possums.  It's a magical spot only an hour south of Hobart, on a two lane road that winds along beside the channel through villages and small towns. From the Cousin's deck you can see forever.

We drove away from the Cousin's place feeling very envious. Neither of us is particularly handy with our hands - unlike the Cousin, an ex-carpenter and builder - so we probably couldn't manage the maintenance on a property like that. But oh boy, did we ever wish we could!

I had been to Tassie before but G hadn't, and I could see the stars forming in his eyes from the first day. Like me, he was bewitched by the place. After only a few days he was thinking sea change. Not right now, as we have my elderly Mum to look after, but in the future.

All Paradise has its serpents, however, and Tassie has a couple of big 'uns. One is the cost of living. Despite being a farming island a hell of a lot of stuff is imported from The Big Island/The North Island/The Mainland, which puts the prices up. Petrol is 20c a litre dearer than Sydney. Utility costs are higher too and if you have a really dry summer you can cop water restrictions as the dams aren't as big. Winter is cold, so heating your property is more expensive. The Cousin is a dab hand with a chainsaw and has plenty of firewood to hand, so his heating bills won't be horrendous.

Land and housing, on the other hand, is cheaper than Sydney (most places are!!!!), except for upmarket areas such as Battery Point and Sandy Bay in Hobart. Lovely suburbs right close to town but almost at Sydney prices. If you had a good enough house in Sydney you could sell, move to Tassie and live off the leftover money, invested wisely.

Unemployment is another serpent. We drove through several towns down on their luck with businesses for sale or simply closed down and boarded up; not pretty enough for chocolate-box photos, and with no outstanding natural beauty nearby, they are truly struggling. (Fingal springs to mind here.) Life is not pleasant if you're living in a small town and unemployed, wondering how you're going to keep your poorly insulated house warm next winter. The Cousin keeps his doors and windows locked and blinds down even when he drives to the nearest town to pick up groceries, as crime is a real problem in the less affluent rural areas.

The prettier towns, the tourist spots like Ross, have a fair percentage of Big Islanders as residents. They've moved from Sydney or Melbourne, cashed up, and can afford a pretty cottage in a nice place; often they have started their own tourism/hospitality business there. Cafes, BandBs…

Realistically if you are self-employed you can do okay, particularly in the trades people need, although the Cousin told us that Tasmania operates on Tasmanian Time, which means tradies have a relaxed interpretation of the word urgent. My business might survive in Tassie - heaven only knows it's barely surviving here, where there are thousands of potential clients. However if we moved south I'd be giving up the business and taking on art and writing fiction I should think. Ideally we would be in a position where I wouldn't have to work full time.

Until then… we'll be spending a bit more time there, exploring, researching, calculating. G is already talking about having a longer holiday in Tassie within the next two years. I did warn him ten days wouldn't be enough!

Still raining - but I can't see beyond the neighbour's house to find out what the weather has in store for me. Oh for those big skies!

On the road again...

Cerulean blue skies, studded with dainty white clouds, which go on forever above hills that, over the course of the day, change colour from dry sandy gold to a lush green as we travel north to Sydney.  The ribbon of grey in front of us, curving, rising, falling.

And the same 6 CDs playing over and over because the sound system in the car is a bit temperamental and we don't want to tempt fate by changing them.

Yes, I've been on a road trip. I would have loved to have blogged during the trip but frankly there wasn't much time. My reason for going was a specific photography assignment, and for several evenings all I did was sort through the 1500 or so pics I took at the Avalon Airshow.

I flew down to Avalon near Geelong just over a week ago, leaving Sydney wet and grim behind me. Avalon was sunny and dry, however, sunny enough to give me a red face on the first day I hauled my camera gear to the show.

My work there done, I left my husband at the show and took the car for a wander around the Bellarine peninsula. Isn't that a lovely name, Bellarine? And the area lives up to it.

From Geelong I headed out to Portarlington, with its fishing boat jetty. I love fishing boats; they look honest and seaworthy, chunky and as cuddly as a boat can be. They have character, particularly the smaller ones. Yes, I do tend to anthropomorphise but you would too if you saw these little cuties:

After a pleasant stroll around the jetty I took The Esplanade, which sounded more interesting than the main road. I didn't know it would reach all the way to St Leonards via Indented Head (which made me laugh out loud). The Esplanade (or whatever it was called by the end of the road) ran beside the sea, with the beach on one side and houses with views to die for on the other. Old houses, new houses, sea shacks and McMansions mixed it up. The sea breeze stirred the air gently, and I felt all the stress inside me melt and escape out to sea as I followed the road around tussocks of sea grass, rocky cliffs and spellbinding views.

My main destination for the day was Queenscliff. Initially settled in the mid-1800s, by the twentieth century it had become a posh seaside destination for Melbournians. There were bathing boxes and bathing machines (which, operated by a hopefully trusty servant, dunked one into the sea and then up out again). Ladies and gents promenaded along the waterfront, walked along the cliff to see the unusual black lighthouse, and stayed in one of the gorgeous Italianate mansions which operated as guest houses or one of the big, luxurious hotels. By the 1930s mixed bathing was permitted on the beach. Gosh! I can imagine Cole Porter's Anything Goes was a popular and apt song for the wealthy people who spent their summers enjoying Queenscliff's sea breeze in the '30s.

For one reason or another - perhaps for once a local Council saw sense - Queenscliff's older buildings are still there. In the heart of the town there are not many buildings newer than the 1920s. It's a living, breathing place though and not a time warp. But it's lovely to walk into a shop, turn around and look up at the light streaming through leadlight windows. 

I got chatting to the owners of a couple of shops, and Queenscliff is still essentially a summer place. The owner of a lingerie shop said she wasn't renewing her lease which was due next month. The "season" was over until the spring. The bookshop owner said she was going to renew, but didn't expect to do a great trade after Labor Day, which is next Monday. I personally think it would be a fab place to visit in winter, with the wind roaring up from Bass Strait. 

After walking around for an hour or so and enjoying a delicious zucchini slice and salad, I headed for Ocean Grove, which is the biggest of the towns on the peninsula (aside obviously from Geelong). Ocean Grove is more modern, so I kept driving and crossed the bridge into Barwon Heads, which was (together with St Leonards)one of the settings for the quirky ABC tv series SeaChange. In the series, the bridge to "Pearl Bay" had been destroyed years before and plans to build a new bridge always went awry. Luckily one of the CDs in G's car was the SeaChange soundtrack - very apt!

My final port of call for the day was Torquay, which boats a surfers' museum and a bloody huge Bunnings, as well as bloody huge surf shops on either side of the road as you enter the heart of town. I was expecting to see bloody huge waves too, but the surf was flat. 

The next day we started our journey north again to Sydney, via Kyneton (for a pie. Bakery pies were a reoccuring theme on our drive home), Castlemaine and Maldon, stopping at Bendigo for the night.

Maldon, below, is another place which has escaped developers. In this case through no fault of its own. It was a goldfields town and the population had dwindled by the 1950s. There was no point in redeveloping. The National Trust took a long hard look and shoved a preservation order on the whole town centre. So what you see is a Victorian town in Victoria.

Maldon survives on tourist trade. We were there midweek, outside school holidays, and you could have let off a bomb and not injured a soul. I suspect it's hotching at weekends as it's only an hour or so out of Melbourne.

I love Bendigo. It's a thriving town that was built on wealth from both the goldfields and wool. It has magnificent stone buildings and has echoes of Paris about it, such as this lamppost:

Bendigo is parks and fountains, statues and decoration. This, for example, is the town hall:

I couldn't fit the whole town hall in, even from across the street.

And here's a touch of Paris in the shape of the law courts. 

Bendigo is a university town, so it's a lively place. We love the Shamrock Hotel, where the food is great and the wine list pretty good for a country town. I enjoyed a glass of Ladies Who Shoot Their Lunch chardonnay. Not just well-named but well-crafted too. 

We only stayed a night, but managed to cram in a good walk around the city centre. But then it was off to Albury to stay with my cousin for a night, via a pie in Benalla.

We were making good time as the SeaChange CD came up for the seventh time in five days, so stopped at Glenrowan to see how the town was making a dollar out of Ned Kelly. Ned's everywhere. We walked around the siege area, went into a museum but declined to spend 40 minutes watching a reenactment of the siege (which interestingly runs every 30 minutes). We amused ourselves at the museum trying to teach the two pet cockatoos to say "bugger off", big kids that we are.

Is Ned larger than life? You bet!

Victoria produces some superb wines but after an hour in Glenrowan realised we were running out of time and could only do one cellar door, so we headed into the first one we could find in the Rutherglen region - Scion Wines.  Tall, dark and handsome Rowly ran us through the tastings and we bought half a dozen mixed wines. Rowly and his Mum do interesting things with the grape varieties they grow, and produce unique wines, with pronounced flavours and a delicate balance.  Their After Dark dessert wine tastes amazing with dark chocolate - they keep some on hand to go with the tasting. Not something you find in every cellar door!

My cousin lives on a small property just outside Albury, and two of my other cousins joined us for a fantastic evening of stories, giggles and chats about family history. Plenty of wine was drunk all around. Must have been good stuff though as none of us had a headache or hangover the next day.

Australian place names can often cause a grin and Burrumbuttock, near Jindera, was enough of a giggle to warrant a photo.

G and I started being very silly at this point: "Ooh, I'm going to burrum your buttock if you're not careful!"

A highlight of our drive through NSW was the compulsory stop at the bakery at Holbrook for one of the best country meat pies you can find. I'd been salivating since breakfast thinking about it. It didn't let me down. I'm cursing that I didn't take pics of my pies as we journeyed about as it would make a great blog post or even travel article - The Life of Pie! Anyway the Holbrook pie I chose this time was a Bushman's pie. I usually have the steak and kidney or steak and mushroom, but this was was steak and veggie, and it was superb. Plenty of cracked black pepper throughout and chunks of carrot, pieces of corn and peas nestled in the gravy.

It's been a hot, dry summer down south. Throughout country Victoria the grass was parched and pale; livestock were scattered sparsely as the nutrition per hectare was small. In the five hours it took to get from Holbrook to Sydney the change was gradual. At first there was a smattering of greener grass here and there; around dams, near homesteads. The hills were resolutely the dry shade of sauvignon blanc, but slowly morphed into an equally dry pale green north of Gundagai. Dams started to look full and more livestock were sheltering from the sun under trees.

North of Yass and into the southern highlands, we felt spoilt. There had been SO much rain in the last month, the grass was blindingly verdant, lush and soft. 

Then we hit Sydney and peak hour traffic, and while the sky was still blue it wasn't as big any longer, and the magic fell away from the day more and more with every red traffic light that ground us to a halt as SeaChange played for the ninth time. The utter, blissful, carefree freedom I'd enjoyed for the last week vanished. I don't like to end a happy post on a note of depression but I was as blue as can be last night and this morning, with 150 new emails in the inbox in the last 36 hours alone, one of my client's websites broken (by them, not me but I still have to fix it) and a garden area ruined during by absence by a cowboy garden maintenance man.

I was put in mind of the last verse of Clancy of the Overflow: 

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal —
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of "The Overflow".

Frankly, I'd make a crap drover. But a few weeks in big sky country, away from all work pressures, sounds like bliss.  I can't wait to get on the road again...

Bad carma

You know you're in trouble when a car mechanic or repair professional sucks in air through his teeth with a whistling sound, and shakes his head.

If this is accompanied by an "Ooo," the news is even worse.

We have had a run of bad luck with our cars in the last couple of weeks. On Boxing Day mine got hit by a garbage truck. The ironic thing is that I had driven it over to my mother's as we were staying there for three nights, thinking it would be safer outside her place than parked outside ours. We live in a low socio-economic area and I had visions of returning to a car minus wheels, windscreen wipers and groovy wing mirror covers.

I woke up on 26 December to find the garbo had reversed down Mum's hill, collected my car on the way and pushed it nearly four metres down the hill, up the gutter and up over Mum's low sandstone retaining wall.

The driver had to return later that morning to do the recyclables run and we were waiting for him. He denied doing the damage but seeing we'd found bits of his mudflap on the road at the point of impact, and the dent in my car's poor rear matched the curve of his tyres, there wasn't much doubt. His boss visited the site and agreed his company would take liability. Cue calls to the police, insurance company, panel beaters, towing company etc etc.

This time of year in Australia everything shuts between Christmas and New Year, so it was only yesterday that I was able to get Minerva towed to the panel beater. I followed her up there in my husband's trusty Subaru and was relieved when the panel beater said he thought it would only be panel damage, not chassis damage.  There was no air sucking, head shaking or Ooohs.

That done, and as the mercury was rising steadily, I headed down to the river for a swim in the baths. It was heading for a stinker of a day, so I enjoyed the cool water and shady trees. I swam around slowly, keeping moving continuously for a solid forty minutes before drying off in the sun and enjoying Douglas Adams' The Salmon of Doubt. Nearing lunchtime I decided to head home. I should have really dropped in at my Mum's for a shower and lunch, as she was only five minutes away, but I had some work to do in the afternoon so decided to think about that crisp salad waiting for me at home.

Ten minutes down the road the clutch pedal refused to lift up when I changed gear. Little alarm bells started to ring in my head. I flipped it up with my foot and continued carefully. The Subi was NOT happy and started to judder underneath near the front of the car. When I put the clutch pedal down again I had trouble changing gear so pulled it into neutral and coasted to the side of the road, coming to rest under a huge Moreton Bay Fig. Acrid smoke was billowing from underneath as I turned the ignition off. Bugger! The clutch!!!

I made the call to the road service people and settled down to wait for the second tow truck of the day. The tree was shady, I had a book but I was madly hungry and also penniless. Even if there had been a sandwich shop open in the vicinity I could only have looked and drooled. Thankfully I had a bottle of water with me which kept the hunger at bay a bit.

My driver arrived and I told him what had happened. He shook his head, sucked in air through his teeth and said "Ooo."

By then I'd figured for myself it wasn't a simple clutch cable replacement but something more serious.

We got the Subaru onto the back of the tow truck and headed for the mechanic's.

While my driver unloaded the Subi I went to chat to the booking staff in the blessed cool of the office and explained what had happened.

Shake of head. Intake of breath through the teeth. Ooo.

I have a theory that the slower and longer the shake of the head, the worse the news is. The mechanic is clearly doing a quick calculation of just how expensive the job's going to be.

The mechanic shook his head very slowly indeed and my heart sank.

The Subaru is an all wheel drive, you see; in order to muck around with the clutch you have to take all four wheels off and half the underbelly and it's a sort of double clutch arrangement or something.... not what you get with a two wheel drive car, anyway. I forget the actual term he used but the estimate was $1700 if they had to replace the entire clutch. Hopefully it will just be replacing the clutch plate itself and that may cost less.

The kind tow truck driver gave me a lift towards home as he had to use a loop road underneath the main road to change direction, so in the 37 degree heat I luckily only had about 400 metres to walk. I arrived home sweaty, salty and hungry and just a bit grumpy.

So now we are carless for a while. Apart from public transport we will be totally reliant on our bikes for transportation, not just pleasure rides.

Maybe it's the universe telling us to slow down, as we haven't had a real break these holidays. There have been people, and dinners, and lunches, and car smashes and all the faffing around that involves. My husband has been fixing our boat and messing around rather badly with fibreglass, which has been full on physical work for him; I have been sanding and painting outdoor furniture. We haven't had the time to fulfil our intentions of simply relaxing and doing nothing. Nothing. Just sitting and reading, or drawing and painting. This weekend we'll have no choice as any journeys we make will be very local.

I think it's bad carma.

I just hope nothing goes wrong now with the bloody bikes!

Surfers' Paradox

I've just come back from sunny Queensland; in the heart of winter, you can wander around happily in a t-shirt up there. We flew up for my brother's wedding at the weekend, and stayed in Surfers' Paradise.

When I was ten years old my Mum and I went to Surfers for a holiday - my first ever holiday that took me more than an hours' drive from Sydney. I was thrilled and delighted and carried the memories of that seaside holiday in a town that was kitsch but fun with me for years after I grew out of the souvenir t-shirt.

That was a looong time again. I've been back to the Gold Coast three or four times since as I have family living there (but thankfully not in the heart of Surfers). I've seen it go from a seaside resort brimming with two-storey motels and a handful of high-rise holiday apartments and residential apartments to Las Vegas by the Sea. 

The Gold Coast is a party destination particularly for the under 30s who like to drink themselves stupid. There are stands and booths selling tickets to parties, or bar-hopping nights. Even in my 20s this kind of outing is something I would have run a hundred miles from. This sign encompasses all there is to know about Surfers Paradise circa 2010:

This part of the Gold Coast is a Mecca for school leavers at the end of the year. In November and early December wise people leave the district. There are shops that cater for the party crowd all year round, like this one:

What you see is what you get. The shoes were amazing - insane heels and platforms. People-watching late at night we saw girls clomping in their six-inch platforms to the nightclubs. There was a sign in "Trashy Shoes" which stated they offered a shoe minding service. If you wanted to wear your shiny, hot-pink and leopard-print stilettoes out of the shop and straight into the clubs, they will mind your existing shoes for you until the next day. Here I am showing off the merchandise, unable to keep a straight face.

Of course there is still the family-friendly side of the place. Theme parks just up the road (not for me thanks) and lots and lots of bicycles about. Plenty of bike hire places too but we were a bit short of time as it was literally a flying visit. Next time I'm riding around the Coast though - it's flat and cyclists careen about confidently, especially this time of year as it's out of holiday season. 

While I saw literally dozens of bikes, either chained outside a shop waiting for someone to hire them, or tethered to bike stands faithfully waiting for their owners, I didn't take photos. Don't know why. Maybe it's a case of 'see one 3 speed cruiser, see them all'. Tons of cruisers. This is cruiser city. 

One of the nicer bits about Cavill Mall in the main part of town is a lovely mosaic with scenes of local life - surfing, enjoying the outdoors and cycling. 

Surfers Paradise is famous for its Meter Maids, curvy girls in gold bikinis who are employed to feed the parking meters so hapless motorists aren't fined by the local Council when their parking runs out. On winter nights, these delicate, stilettoed creatures wear gold leggings. I never knew anyone made gold leggings. Let's just hope they don't take off as a fashion item, eh?

Cavill Mall is the main shopping part of town, full of tacky touristy shops, and plenty of cheap cafes serving half decent coffee and breakfast. It's an assault on the senses though. Blaring out over the constant noise of construction as more high-rise buildings take shape is the music which every shop and cafe insists on playing. All different. All annoying. You can hardly hear yourself think as you sip your coffee. It was a real relief to turn a corner and hear, for a moment, relative silence. I think we get used to a lot of white noise in our life, but sometimes you can become really aware of it. Sitting in a jumbo jet is quiet compared to Cavill Mall.

And finally, the architecture. As I said, it's changed a lot. It's all high-rise now. Any advantages the first tall buildings in the 60s and 70s had have long been eclipsed. Building after building has ensured that only the extremely wealthy get a decent sea view, and everyone else sees into the windows of the apartment building opposite. We counted no less than four buildings under construction in the same block as our hotel. And the bloody construction workers start work before 7am, too- just what you want after a late night out at a wedding!

Here's some of  the view from our hotel:

That curved building in the right really is curved - it's not just the wide angle lens, but admittedly the curvature has been a bit exaggerated.

And finally, the beach. The reason Surfers has been a seaside legend since the 1920s. Well, because of the high rise, the beach has almost disappeared. It's had to be topped up at regular intervals by sand imported from up or down the coast. High rise developments like this lot affect the way the wind moves with the sea and the dunes. Oh, and because the beach faces east/west, after lunch you don't get any sun on the beach because of the high-rise apartments.

This is before breakfast - you can see the tyre tracks where the beach is groomed and smoothed out on a nightly basis. It looks pretty wide here but imagine this picture was an inch wider on the right - you'd see the water.

Here's looking in the other direction - always swim between the red and yellow flags, as that's the area monitored by the lifeguards. And swim people did. We didn't pack our bathers - didn't think we'd have time to use them, but did paddle in the water, getting our rolled-up jeans soaked to the knees. Mmm, a luxury to walk on a beach in winter and not shriek at the temperature of the water!

Overall though I wonder what's going to win out in Surfers Paradise. Is it going to be just a party town, full of rowdy drunks? Apart from the theme parks, is it no longer a family place? And what of the high rise buildings, growing determinedly in spite of a financial crisis and with apartment price tags starting at $600K+ for a one-bedroom apartment? Who's buying them? There are a lot of brand new apartments still to be had 'off the plan'. Locals don't go to Surfers these days; they shop elsewhere, they swim elsewhere. 

What I ponder on is the impression any overseas traveller gets of Australia if Surfers is one of the few places they visit. It's long been a holiday of choice for Japanese people, and now Muslim travellers flock there in winter (and complain the meter maids are too scantily clad. This blog isn't a vehicle for cultural differences, but really, if you visit a place you should read up first and know what to expect. If I visited a Muslim country I'm sure I'd be made cover up; my culture wouldn't be given any quarter). It's a shame if a key impression they get of this brilliant country is one of drunks staggering out of nightclubs and throwing up in the streets.