We're off to the Sunshine Coast to visit Jill for the last few days of our holiday. I have never been further up than Brisbane, other than flying to Cairns, and Port Douglas, on different occasions, so it should be fun seeing new places.
Just thinking about the last time I went to Port Douglas was with my best mate Tom, so he could have a break from his cancer treatment. He treated me, I said he didn't have to do that, but he said there was no one he'd rather go with.
"It could be my last holiday ever," he said with his usual cheeky smile, rather prophetically as it turned out. I can still picture it. Not that he really believed that at the time. We had fun, that's all I should remember now. I had my first helicopter ride, which I absolutely loved, (I want travel by helicopter ever where I go) which Tom bought unbeknownst to me.
"Let me do this," he said, when I said I'd pay for myself. "I don't know when I'll be able to do this again."
Not long after we got home, he got a brain virus, which would be benign in the rest of us, but with his compromised immune system from all the chemotherapy for his leukaemia, it killed him in 24 hours. He was 39 years old. The best best friend a boy could have, funny how that didn't become crystal clear until he was gone.
That was the last time I had been to Queensland. Still, onward and upwards, new things to see, hey?
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