Marooychdore, Caloundra, Mountain walks
Finally getting some sunshine! Have had four days in a row with no rain! Yippee! So nice to be able to get and about without getting waterlogged and wet feet! The weather is beautiful, lovely warm days mid to high 20s so still in shorts and tshirts and the lowest it has got at night is 11.6. Can certainly see the drawcard for so many people wanting to live here. We were without the car for most the Anzac weekend as John was fixing a really bad rust spot in the door and roof and of course when he started to fix it it was a dry day and the following day it poured all day so put paid to the work he had started and because the filler has to dry between coatings it all took longer than it should have had. Anyway he did a good job and all fixed now and best of all we saved $900 had we taken it to the local panel beater! John mowed the lawn on Monday – a ride on mower so an easy job! We caught up with an old air force buddy of Johns named Rocky for coffee at Marooychdore during the week. Marooychdore is about 40kms north of us. Rocky and John hadn’t seen each other for 21 years! How bad is that. Rocky is a captain with a Taiwanese commercial airline and whilst he lives in Qld is based in Taipei. So he is away for 5 weeks and home for 12 days – been doing this for 13 years! Must have a very understanding wife. Really nice guy and hopefully we can catch up with him and his wife (whom we haven’t met) before we leave. We met him at a cafe at the Sunshine Plaza which is a humongous shopping centre – have never seen so many shops and the carpark is enormous. It is a nice centre and what you can’t buy there isn’t worth having! It was very overwhelming as there is so much in and around the centre. After a while I switched off to what was around too much to take in! On the way home we did a coastal drive checking out some of the coastline and towns. The whole coast caters for holiday makers and there is so much holiday accommodation majority seems to be self contained apartments in blocks of anywhere up to about five storeys high. Maroochydore has a nice coastline and made us realise how much we miss not being close to the ocean, such a pickmeup to smell the ocean air and spray. Stopped at Mooloolaba Wharf. Very low key. Reminded us of a very downmarket Hillarys Boat Harbour (in WA) in that it had an underwater world, speciality shops and on the water – in this case canals not the ocean like Hillarys. Quite seedy looking. From there we stopped at Caloundra which is much nicer and had a lovely feel about it. John had one of the guys he used to work with in Brisbane visit and of course the discussion centred around trading – boring so I left them to it and took advantage of the sunshine to do some sightseeing. Went to two scenic lookouts, one called the Wildhorse Lookout which is via a 700m walk from the carpark up a fairly steep climb to the fire tower. Great view, although unfortunately EPA (I guess) were burning off and the mountains were blocked by a smoke haze. Will have to go back on a clear day. Could see Brisbane city and the ocean on the skyline. This lookout is named after the brumbies that used to run free in the area. The other lookout is the Glass House Mountains lookout. There is a lovely 800m loop walk here that has some great scribbly gum trees.
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