Back From Up North

Well, Queensland was a great break from it all. We had a really nice spot, just across the water, on Chevron Island, from the heart of everything. We had a deck which went from our back door to the water's edge. At night, the lights of the tall high rise buildings were like being in the heart of a big city. I love the lights of a big city at night, they have a magic all of their own.

Seven out of the eight people there were smoking, but only two of them claimed to be full time smokers. I was the non-smoker. Everyone else was smoking just because they were on holidays. What, I think? How can this be? As David would say, what is this supposed to be telling me? Why is the universe presenting this to me? I guess, you can guess what happened next, huh? I was a gonna. I made it to the second night.

Now I have to stop smoking again. Grrr!

We began drinking from midday every day. As one of the girls said as she was leaving, "Well, we didn't get much sightseeing done, but we saw the inside of most of the bars in a square radius of here."

The Gold Coast itself was foul, really. It was development on top of development, nothing nice about any of it. Oh, it wasn't so much that there was anything wrong with any of the new building, but you could see them all in any modern city you cared to visit. There was nothing unique to the area. It was all brand new buildings, or buildings that were built in the last few decades which were dating badly and, probably, in need of redevelopment themselves.

Cavill Avenue, blur – one big tacky shopping mall. The beach front itself was mostly fenced off for work that was being done, or schoolies.

Yes, schoolies was on, not that they really bothered us, we could watch at a distance and remain relatively unaffected.

As Nicholas said, "I've never seen so many ripped little boys with their perfect abs and their arses hanging out."

As Tim said, "Young and dumb and full of cum... and that's the girls."

They were pissed and aggro and all testosterone'd up by around by midnight, so we didn't venture across the bridge at that time much, once or twice just to watch the circus.

We went deep see fishing where half of us were sick, including Nicholas who was the reason we, actually, went. He was the first to turn green and spew, poor baby. I, actually, loved it and when I got bored of fishing, I went up and stood on the bow and gazed out across the water. Spectacular. The waves rocked the boat and they refracted with the sun all the way back to the horizon, sparkling like a billion facets of a diamond.

I rolled with the waves losing myself in them.

The others did a lot of shopping, but not what you are thinking. The others made several trips to the supermarket every day. Now, I'm not the one to be rushing off to the supermarket with a spring in my step and a whistle on my lips, even at the best of times, you know. Halfway through the week this put me into a strange head space. Suddenly, I got paranoid about not paying my fair share. It was something Tim said, not that it matters what it was. (Ed note – truthfully, I can't remember the exact words) And then they were gone to the supermarket before I got up. I don't know why, but that did my head in, in a minor way, but still.

Then I tried to compensate by paying for lots of things, but somehow that just seemed to make it worse.

Funny, huh? I'm not like that normally, so I don't know what electrons were pulsing through my brain? I reckon it's because Sam has called me a tight arse a couple of times lately.

Anyway, we all had a good time and vowed we would all have to do it again next year.

It's nice to be home.