Friday - Tuesday, January 21 - 25 2011 (diary)

The weather has much improved these last days, blue skies and sunshine. The surf has also been unusually warm this week 27° C. During the 20 odd summers I have spent here the ocean has never got that warm. Usually 25° max, with perhaps a few days in February where it touched 26, but never a solid 27°. Perhaps with all that water flowing in from the various rivers a fluke warm current has come our way. Anyway I am not complaining.

Monday the 24th the new school year has started. Overnight the Mooloolaba Caravan Park (right on the beach) went from fully booked to three quarters empty, and there are lots of parking spaces in town again and no long cues. The shops owners are not happy though, it has been a very poor holiday season for them.

I have just completed my new Blues Course and uploaded it online, so will have more time for my Blog now.

Wednesday, January 26 2011 (diary)

Well, that was rejoicing too early. It is Australia Day today and Mooloolaba is flooded by cars, I have never seen so many here. I eventually find a park and get to the beach. "Wall to wall" umbrellas and 4-legged gazebos (the ones made by Oztrail, so popular with market stall holders around the country), and swimmers along the entire length of the Mooloolaba Spit.
Families are gathered everywhere along the nature strip, having BBQs. It is good to see, especially after a very drab Christmas day when hardy anybody turned up.

Thursday - Monday, January 27 - 31 2011 (diary)

When I was just 5 years old (in 1942) we moved from the ancient town of Zutphen to Martinshof, our new home in the country, where I grew up and lived for most of my life, until migrating to Australia (in 1965). This experience made me forever a definite country boy, although all my neighbours and childhood friends to this day consider me still a "stadse drel" (city slicker).
The country environment is deeply embedded in my nature, and I generally hate large cities and avoid as much as possible having to go there.

But my Dutch passport has run out and I need to apply for a new one, now requiring finger printing to be done at the Dutch Consulate in Brisbane. I catch a lift in with Doug who is going to work at Babette's school. The approach to the inner city is busy everywhere with new road constructions : tunnels, overpasses, underpasses. An extraordinary amount of money is being spent here on making the city centre more approachable by car.
I can't help thinking how politics always appears to be directed at spending money where the voters are, not where the greater long term benefit for the country lies. The inland roads are a shambles, rail services are dreadful, ports are congested, in short the vital arteries of healthy economic life in this country are being neglected at the expense of short term Band-Aid solutions for the congestion in Australia's (five only) large cities.

On a more positive note it appears that much of Brisbane's city centre (mostly located on higher ground) is operating with business as usual after the recent floods.
I am also struck by the large number of sushi stalls and Japanese restaurants which haver sprung up all over the place since the last time I was here.
Australians everywhere are becoming very partial to Japanese food, which is good and healthy (as the legendary longlivety of the Japanese attest to), and I smile every time I see a real Aussie character deflty handling a pair of chopsticks as if he has used them all his life.