When I was a kid we used to spend most of our holidays camping and one of our favourite places to go camping was Stradbroke Island. It’s about 20 mins drive and an hour on the vehicular ferry (I remember when it was $12 return and now it’s about $110 return) from here and we used to go camp up the 4WD access only sections of Flinder’s Beach. My Mum tells me I was 3 months old the first time I went to Straddie….
Sledding down the sandunes on the hood off an old car.
Snorkelling amongst the rocks at Pt Lookout to look for octopii.
We snorkelled at Amity Pt too but you need a shark spotter there.
Driving down the beach hearing the bluebottles popping under the tyres.
Swimming at Blue Lake and laugh like hyenas on the rope swings.
Dad teaching us how to dig for pipis and how to fish in the surf.
Yabbi pumping down at the mangrove mudflats at low tide.
Watching the soldier crabs scatter as the mud squished between your toes.
Swimming at night when the water was phosphorescent and magical.
Gutting fish up on the rocks and then cooking them for breakfast.
Watching the tyre tracks crisscross in the sand out the back of the Nissan.
Getting dumped by rough surf over and over but not wanting to get out.
Ice creams from the Mintee Street shop as special holiday treats.
Getting sunburnt bums while skinny dipping in the lagoons at Main beach.
Scuffing the sand at night and looking for sparkles.
Collecting shells and making bracelets of them with fishing line.
Laying under the casurina trees and looking at the stars.
We had some strange adventures at Straddie too….there was the time we were all swimming at Flinders and suddenly some semi-aquatic military tanks came rumbling out of the water (very surreal). And one other time when I was about 7 I cut my hand on a beer bottle and the local doctor stitched it up without any anesthetic (we was tougher back then). One time we came back to the camp to find our dog Josie going postal at the car and it took us ages to figure out that a red-bellied black snake had decided to wrap itself up under the wheel arch. I remember once waking up in the middle of the night to find that a couple of the local indigenous peoples were trying to steal our esky… the one full of beer of course not the one full of food.
I even went to Straddie for Schoolies in 1988… about 14 of us crammed into a two bedroom cottage 🙂 with loads of grog and hardly any food… but for Mandy’s ‘special’ jam drops 😉 I remember Colleen passed out drunk on Malibu rum and got really badly sun burned… ah to be young and stupid again.
But I think my fondest memory of Straddie is of Mum waking me up in the middle of the night as a kid and taking me for a drive out to Point Lookout. We carefully picked our way along the very dodgy ‘Scenic Walk’ to watch the blow hole going off in the moonlight. I could go on and on… I don’t think any of us knows for sure exactly how many trips we’ve taken to Straddie and I think we’re well overdue another visit.
But what I started writing about was how yesterday I remembered a silly story of how I ended up with a black eye from a jellyfish sting when I was maybe 8 or 9. We were swimming near Adder Rock with my family and my Unc and cousins. My Unc was or I should say is a bit of a larrikin and he stole his wife’s bikini top and threw it into the surf leaving her stranded under the water trying to preserve her modesty. She asked me to
swim out and fetch it back for her which I did and quickly threw it back to her. As I was swimming back into the beach I swam right into a blue bottle jelly fish and it’s tentacles wrapped twice around my torso causing me to scream blue murder in pain. Think of it like being stung by bees in massive long lines :S Unc raced me up the beach and they scrubbed sand all over my body to remove the tentacles off my body (somehow I don’t think that is the recommended first aid treatment for jellyfish sting nowadays). Then they raced me up to the Surf Lifesavers where I got doused in vinegar. But where did the black eye come into the picture?
When we got back home to BrisVegas after our holiday, my Mum was telling my Not-So-Favourite Aunt about what happened and I lifted my shirt up over my face and walked towards them to show her the big red welts left around my torso from the bluebottle and… smuck! I walked straight into a big knobby bed end and got a black eye for my efforts ….
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