Random Monday Morning Musings.

It's a Monday morning here.  I am home enjoying a day off work with little to do but rest and recover from the weekend. 

This weekend myself and new special friend travelled north from Brisbane to Bundaberg, a journey of around 400 kilometres (about 250 miles for those who think metric is the tool of the devil).  I have to say I have never travelled to Bundaberg before.  I have been further north, but the main highway north (the Bruce highway) stays further west and inland.  Like most Australian highways, it seems to suffer from a chronic lack of investment in the future.  There are large sections where it is a single lane each way with limited overtaking opportunities.  On top of this add in trucks and caravans travelling below the posted limit, along with bumps and no median divider, and you end up with a dangerous road for the tired and/or inexperienced driver.  The governments solution is to spend a long time building a new road and in the mean time reduce the speed limit on the existing road.  This means you are guaranteed to be stuck on it longer, behind more slow traffic, feeling stressed and fatigued.  It seems the whole of the Bruce Highway, which is part of the national highway system, is somewhat of a joke.  From Brisbane to the Sunshine coast it is a wide 6 lane modern free-way, but then it degenerates into 2 lane country road and sections that are often flooded and impassable in the wet season the further north you go.  This leads to increased numbers of accidents.  I remember the old Pacific Highway to Sydney was very similar in years gone by, and it was a similarly stressful and dangerous drive.  The national and state governments could do worse than to invest more money into creating a national highway system that would at least be up to the standards of the 1990's, rather than the 1960's as so much of it is.

Anyway, that rant over, we turn to Bundaberg, a town built on the sugar industry and rum.  Rum it seems is much beloved of bogans, who consume great quantities of it mixed with coke, and then go on sugar and alcohol fuelled sprees of violence.  Bundaberg is of course famous for Bundaberg Rum, the product in question, and usefully colloquially known as Bundy. 

My weekend was spent in Burnett Heads, some 15 or so kilometres from the centre of town, and near the mouth of the Burnett River.  It is a very sleepy seaside village, unlike it's neighbour Bargara, which has become a blight of cafes and holiday units and retired persons seeking some sunshine to keep them warm before death's cold hand grabs hold of them.  I have to say I enjoyed the relaxed (i.e. non-existent) pace of life and could happily see myself retiring to somewhere like it.  I fear however that it will be raped by developers and property speculators within the next few years.  In the meantime it seems like a lovely spot to holiday and enjoy doing nothing for a few years to come.

Finally some other observations from my time are:

I am not as young as I once was, I cannot drive 400km, spend the night partying too hard and then drive home the next day.  I am paying for it.

I must not drink so much, I forget I can very easily overdo it and end up alternating feeling rather ill with bouts of unconsciousness.

Sleeping on couches in your clothes is not as comfy as being able to make it back to your cabin you paid money to rent, and sleeping in a proper bed, with air conditioning.

It is possible to feel so queasy that the smell of bacon is not a good thing.

Hangovers suck at any age.


Back to our regular programming next week....