BRISBANE AND BALLINA

Monday August 14, 2012: We headed out after an excellent breakfast of the wonderfully fresh fruit – pink grapefruit today as well as oranges and mandarins – and some good muesli. Both the Dunns and the Loxtons say they are planning trips to Melbourne in the next 12 months or so. We’ve told them they would be very welcome to stay with us.

Although we usually travel on back roads, rather than highways, we were making a couple of stops today so headed down the Bruce Highway, parts of which were excellent, but other areas needed a good deal of work.

Our first stop was at Bribie Island to see Jan Crichton, widow of Ron who died three years ago from prostate cancer. The Crichtons are really poor communicators –never even kept up the Christmas cards – but they always seemed to be happy to see us. Maybe they were just very polite people!! Jan looked good and although we only had an hour or so for her and a cup of coffee, the ladies compressed a good deal of news into that time. On our way back to the highway – Bribie Island is about 30 km off the main road -  Tom, our GPS, led us astray and we landed up at the wrong end of the island, well away from the bridge back to civilization. Fortunately I had built a little spare time into our schedule and we were soon back on track and on time.

Having found our way to Vulture Street in Brisbane, we managed to get to the vicinity of the restaurant in South Bank Parklands where we had agreed to met Peter and Therese -  Decks Seafood & Steak Restaurant. But we couldn’t see the place anywhere, although Tom told us we had arrived. There were students wandering about all over the place so we asked a couple of them for directions. Unfortunately most of them represented the influx we have had over the past decade of students from Asia and their grasp of the English language was tenuous. We finally hit pay dirt with a couple of Aussies who pointed out where we could park and how to get to the eatery.

We hadn’t seen Peter since he had a stroke five years ago, but, as he said there has been very little residual damage and he seemed to be enjoying life as much as he always has.  Therese also had a number of health issues relating to her immune system, but seemed to have managed to overcome them pretty well after a good deal of effort.

Peter and Therese - and our guest

 It was very pleasant sitting in the warm sun watching the traffic on the river and the bank. Two years ago when the river was in flood we would have been under several feet of water, but everything has been cleaned up and repaired since then.   We had a good laugh when a rustling in the bush behind Therese turned out to be a frill necked lizard or an iguana – none of us were sure just which it was, but it was about two foot nose to tail – climbing steadily up the bush to get a better view. He didn’t bother us and we just ignored him so we heard nothing more. Rab and I chose a light meal - salt and pepper calamari for her and a delicious grilled seafood skewer for me. Just what we needed. P and T each had a seafood platter and we were glad we hadn’t made that choice. Although it was advertised as including grilled salmon, that was a piece about the size of my thumb while the rest of the very large platter consisted of crumbed and fried fish and a large quantity of chips – hardly good value at $44 a platter.  

All too soon we were on our way with promises of meeting up again – up Vulture Street and on to the Pacific Highway heading for our overnight stop at Ballina.

Rab had booked us in at the Ballina Manor Boutique Hotel, a lovely old building that had started life as a boarding school for girls. We got there at about 17.15 as the sun was beginning to set and whilst the hotel was quaint, it had no lift/elevator and our room was on the first floor (second floor in US terms). The staircase was steep and the cases were quite heavy by the time I struggled to the top. Quaint is one thing: practical is another! The room was very pleasantly furnished in antique style and we were very happy there as it was very comfortable. One aspect of guest comfort that we had never come across before in any of our travels was a Pillow Menu where you could choose from a variety of pillows. We’re not too fussy and the existing pillows were fine for us, but we thought it was a nice touch.

We had arranged to meet up with Chris and Marj, a couple who we had met on our White Winter Tour in 2010 and who live in Ballina. It was lovely seeing them again and although the hotel promised fine dining, there was no lounge or bar where we could sit and chat, so we went on down to the RSL Club. For non-Australians, RSL is an acronym for Returned Servicemen’s League and these clubs are a feature of all the small towns across Australia (and of course in the cities). In many of the States they were the only venues where one armed bandits/slot machines/fruit machines were allowed, so they tend to provide a pleasant venue and reasonably priced food and drink, subsidised by the gamblers who get a deal of pleasure from putting their hard earned cash into the machines.

Ballina Manor and the Pillow Menu

The Ballina RSL was no exception to the general rule and the food was excellent and very reasonable. I had a pork hock which was wonderful. We had a very good evening with the girls and had a good laugh on the way home when I stopped to take a shot of the post office. The spotlight on the building made it look – to me at least – like an enormous ogre towering over the town. Maybe it was my imagination – it couldn’t have been the demon drink as I certainly never drink and drive in Australia.

A good day.