Scarborough

Hello Mary Lou, Goodbye heart, Sweet Mary Lou Im so in love with you…..

It is a cheap Christmas present of a guitar.
Banging away at it, he mostly gets his fingers around each cord….and four of the six strings are just about in tune. His voice is a crooning Slim Dusty on prozac. Loud and enthusiastic, and full of good old male Aussie passion in a faux American accent.

And he is about 6 meters away from us.

Kelly rolls over from deep in her afternoon nap position. “Oh, no…..not again!”

It was the same yesterday afternoon.
A two hour free acoustic concert of old-time and country music favourites from the man in the next to next van site from us.
Such is life in a holiday park.

Oh, give me a home amongst the gum trees, with lots of plum trees…a sheep or two and a kangaroo….

Every 10 bars or so there is an interruption whilst aberrant finger positions are readjusted, a beer is slugged, or a page in his (obviously very thick) song book is turned.
I imagine it is titled: ’1,865 slightly annoying Country and Folk songs for beginner guitar. 2nd edition.’

Kelly and I joke about it, but to be honest it’s kind of cool to listen to guitar man sing his heart and set the ambiance of the evening.

For the last 2 nights we have been staying in Scarborough on the Redcliffe peninsula, around about 30 km outside of Brisbane. It is located around a harbour marina with some great cycleways, parks and coffee opportunities.

Today we loaded up Juno and rode down the costal esplanade to Redcliffe. Totally unbeknownst to us, this is the place where Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb grew up, and began their singing careers.

There is a neat little alleyway that pays tribute to the Bee Gees with pictorial history, a couple of bronze statues and a video music display to tribute the 200 million records they sold. We spent quite some time poking around this interesting little memory lane, and I enjoyed being taken back in time to the beats of ’Stayin Alive’ and ‘How Deep is Your Love’. My first ever serious date was to see the movie Saturday Night Fever.

We also wondered around the marina checking out the rigs. I have this fantasy of learning to sail and buying a ocean worthy vessel in which to go out and explore the world.
Unfortunately, the reality is that I would probably spend any sea travels hunched over the side laying an uninterrupted semi-digested burley trail to mark my passage.