Ek wil n huisie by die see he
The title refers to a very common ideal that’s beautifully captured in a relatively well known Afrikaans song with the same title. It basically talks about most city folk’s dream to have a little house on the coast away from all the madness.
This Easter long weekend Anne-Marie and I decided to take to the road and find our little home away from home. The trip had to be by car because we needed to travel to places we knew and find places we didn’t. The aim wasn’t to actually buy something on the day but to find a few towns we could put on a shortlist. I wanted to go sit on that beach or have a burger in that little shop in the main street and decide if it was what we wanted.
We left Sydney on Thursday afternoon and head North West on the New England Highway to avoid the traffic on the coastal Pacific Highway. We reached our first stop, Armidale, by about 10 PM. A restless sleep and a less than interesting breakfast later and we’re on our way again.
This time it’s north and more north and then some more north until we hit a town called Ipswich, just south of Brisbane for a coffee and a bite to eat and then back in the car. North again, past Brisbane and up towards the Sunshine coast - not to be confused with the Central Coast or the Gold Coast all in the other place along the the Australian East coast.
Here for the first time we joined the rest of Queensland on the roads and sat in some serious traffic all the way to Noosa, our most northerly destination.
We realised quickly that we should have booked a camping site as all the camp grounds south of Gympie all the way to Brisbane was full. So we went driving around and found a nice little room at a hotel not far away from the town centre at a reasonable rate.
Unpacked all the stuff, including the food and drinks cooler ( or esky as they are referred to here in Oz ) in the apartment. I put the esky on the kitchen bench and we sat down in front of the TV to relax for a bit before we went out for dinner.
A strange smell from the kitchen and a sizzling sound made us both jump and run only to realise that the esky must have pushed and turned on the benchtop stove when I put it there and has now started bellowing smoke into the the lounge and up the stairs towards the bedrooms where it found the smoke alarm.
The next few minutes was mad to say the least. I am just glad we where there when it happened and not sitting down in the restaurant relaxing my way through a bottle of Vasse Felix Merlot.
The next 2 days was spent driving down the coast looking for anything special.
We identified 4 places on a short list and will monitor them closely. Hopefully soon that dream will be a reality.
