Bribie Island - Week 1

Bribie Island Queensland week 1

We managed a good run through Brisbane’s motorways to get to Bribie Island from Casino. Well, we got almost to the island as the two parks on the island were booked out and we got into one about 2km short of the bridge (it’s about a kilometre long too). With a bit of huffing and puffing we got onto the site in a fairly large park with mostly long termers and a retirement village down the back.

Bribie Island provided lots of recreation and useful services. The shopping centres are well provided and we found an op-shop or two to renew our reading supplies. We found a shop that specialises in second hand stuffed toys (reminded me of a bedroom I had seen). Anne got a swim suit for use in the warmer climes at a great price as the shop owner knocked it down to 50% for ‘out of season’ - so we are definitely not swimming at Bribie... The island has some very easy to get to bird watching sites including one that also had a kangaroo down from the nature park for an excursion of his own. The RSL gave us a delightful dinner one evening with a dessert that Anne thought good enough to publish on Facebook.

On our one day in Brisbane we took the opportunity to visit my brother Max and his wife Marion and Anne’s brother Pat. It was interesting to compare their respective residences, a modern home and a more traditional ’Queenslander’. Both were good examples and despite the brand new entrance stairs to the Queenslander we probably liked the modern one most.

We heard a stone hit the windscreen just outside Casino and the run up gave the chip time to develop enough for us to see it so we visited a Caboolture repaired to get it fixed.

The historic village in Caboolture took up the rest of a very pleasant day looking at the exhibits and also talking to some of the many volunteers. It is an unusual collection as it includes items from what we would have thought of as separate eras. Most was donated so we found some items that we are still using at home mixed in with others that we were able to remember from our grandparents’ days. At one point we hurried along to a big machinery shed to look at a Morris Minor similar to my first car, only to find that it is the daily driver of one of the machinery shed volunteers. It is a pity that such collections are getting too hard to gather and maintain as occupational safety concerns prevent many of the ‘gathering and maintenance’ techniques used twenty years ago. A donated structure will come on site shortly at the transportation cost of $45,000 whereas ten years ago “the boys would ‘ave got ‘er for nix – an’ ‘ad enough left over for a beer at the end of the day!”

Lots of drivers lost their right arm through use of these signals

Eumundi Markets finished off the first week with a flourish. One of the advantages of a hefty 4x4 is we got to park quite close to the entrance in a mud patch rather than way down the back. We found it an interesting mixture of the larger Sydney ‘Paddy’s’ style with a number of stalls that were more like the ones we used to do at Hall. The hours (start at 6.30 am) would never have worked for us. One stall had all the second hand books arranged by author – marvellous for the customer and the stall holder informed me that she often has someone take a job lot of all of the author’s works. We didn’t buy much and the strawberries were all gone by the time we decided to get some – real strawberries as big as eggs are coming into season about here.

The ornaments were awful, but the sense of humour ok!!!