This weekend, Mick's sister Alisa and their mom Karen invited me along for a day trip up to the Sunshine Coast. Of course, it turned out to be the one rainy day of the week, but it was pretty beautiful all the same. Our route was planned by the female voice of the GPS in the car, who I will refer to as 'Bossy', according to POI. Now I was not aware that POI was an acronym for more than one expression. And the only one I knew was Persons of Interest, i.e. criminal suspects. Turns out Bossy meant Points of Interests. In case you're curious about her name, Bossy didn't even trust us to follow traffic laws at roundabouts correctly. She was quite a micromanager.
We had breakfast in a town called Mooloolaba (yep, just trying pronouncing that one!) and it was a bit cool for Australia, but as I'm constantly told, it's almost *winter* now. Ah yes, winter. Perhaps I should have worn my jeans instead of my shorts today... no wait, it's still 22 degrees. Everyone keeps asking me if I've remembered to bring my jumper and my honest reply of puzzlement is always 'what for?'.
After breakfast we headed up to Noosa, which is a big holiday resort area for Australians. And tourists. But fewer than down on the Gold Coast. It's all relative when the bulk of international tourism is beach-oriented. That area has a really nice national park right on the headland of the coast where there's a river mouth going inland. But of course it was raining by then, so I had to settle for gelato instead of a 3km walk in the bush. Darn it.
We then went inland to the hinterland of the area and after driving up into mountains I seem to have missed on my way there, we arrived in Montville, a completely charming town nestled right onto the edge of the mountain with a truly panoramic and awesome view of the coastline. And thankfully by then the sun was peeking out so I could get a glimpse of how spectacular the area would be when bathed in sunshine as it usually would be.
I should also mention that on this outing I got to see the famous (infamous?) heritage site, the Giant Pineapple. It was especially pointed out to me on the drive. Apparently the owner didn't want it listed as a heritage site, and now he can't make any changes to it without lots of red tape etc. We also drove by the lovely Glass House Mountains again (en route to Australia Zoo), and just like Mick and his brother Jordan, Alisa and her mom were eager to tell me the cool story behind them. Which they all learn in primary school. And which none of them can remember. Thank heavens for Google, eh?
First story: Short English version. Captain Cook, the Colombus of the Southern Hemisphere, saw the mountains from his ship and remarked that their unique shapes made them look like the glass houses of his homeland in Yorkshire.
Second story: An Aboriginal legend. Each mountain represents a member of a family. The father Tibrogargan noticed a flood was coming and asked one son Coonowrin to help his pregnant mother Beerwah to safety. The son ran away to save himself and when dad found out, he was so angry that he smashed his son's head with a club, leaving the son with a terrible crook in his neck. The son tried to apologize and everyone wept at his cowardice, creating all the rivers and streams in the area. But the father wouldn't forgive him and turned his back on him forever. Which is why the father mountain faces away from the son mountain and the poor mom mountain is still pregnant (it takes awhile to give birth to a baby mountain...)
While Australia is certainly known for its sunshine and beaches, it's perhaps less famous for its enthusiasm for a sport called Netball. This past Sunday afternoon we received a phone call - one of Mick's friends was super short on people to play in a local netball league and wanted to know if we were up for it. I agreed on the basis that it was like a women's version of basketball (though what that meant, I had no idea) and had minimal rules. This was misleading representation. Netball resembles basketball in that it takes place with a ball on a court and the goal is to get the ball through hoops on posts. That is where the similarities end.
I had to remember more of what NOT to do than what to do during the game. You aren't allowed to dribble. You can't move when you have the ball. You can't hold the ball for more than three seconds. You can't pass across an entire third of the court. You can't wave your arms in front of someone unless you're more than a meter away from them. And there was no backboard on the net, so my crap aim was even crappier since I had no ricochet to back me up.
Unfortunately, most of these rules were not told to me before the game started and as a result, I had seven whistles on me in the first quarter alone, until I finally started clueing in to what I was doing wrong. There are assigned positions in this game, so I was the goalkeeper and thus not allowed to leave the third of the court at our end. Thankfully this kept me minimally responsible for the ball, since our team had a reasonably good offence which kept the ball at the other end of the court. Unfortunately, the other team's goalscorer (my nemesis) was a guy about a foot taller than me, so once I was back the required one meter in order to wave my arms in the hopes of nabbing the ball, my efforts were pretty futile. I did manage to swipe it once or twice on rebound. Oh well. We lost the game by ONE point, 21-20 in the last few minutes of play. Which actually wasn't too bad, since we were one person short and the other team had subs. Plus, our team had the Canadian handicap to make up for.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment