Sunday, March 06, 2005
On holiday for the day

Rather than settle in Redcliffe for a few months, any medium term visitors to Brisbane area are well advised to use Caloundra as a base.

I did realise there was a little more to the place, after my only visit here last February, but was pleasantly surprised to be pleasantly surprised that it is a pleasantly surprising place. It makes you feel like you are on holiday, but just for the day. So much so that the waiter in restaurant in which we had dinner asked us how long we were staying. Maybe it was our foreign accents.

With the weather drying up and making the bush a less pleasant place (Brisbane received 20mm of rain in February; the average is 171mm), we used this week’s carbon quota on driving up the coast to the beach at Caloundra on Saturday. The early afternoon was spent lolling in the swell and in the sun on Moffats Beach, to the north of the city and then later we headed over to Kings Beach where the kids jumped about in the fountains and in the parks for a couple of hours. The sea was fantastically warm and clear.

Later, we walked along the undercliff boardwalk around the headland to the town centre. This walk affords the most amazing views over the northern extremities of Bribie Island and the island’s beach which sweeps south, unbroken and unspoilt, for some 35km.

In the foreground, surfers ply their trade on the huge white horses breaking over the narrow and shallow opening into Pummicestone Passage, the body of water which separates Bribie Island from the mainland.

Towards the west, there is a view inland over the Glasshouse mountains. Alas, Caloundra City Council has allowed this view to be brutally savaged by high rise (8-10 storeys) development at Golden Beach, which all but blocks out the mountain views from Caloundra. They could have kept developments low key and low down and preserved the aesthetic but instead, they have all but ruined the sweeping vista from Moreton Island in the east to Mount Beerwah in the west.
Determined not to let something as trivial as inappropriate development get in the way of a good meal, we finished off at the Naked Turtle for dinner. If you ever go there, save some room for the fantastic desserts. The menu is not huge, but anything you have will taste good.

Zooming home, later on, takes less than an hour.

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