Bullswan I live at Yandina, on the Sunshine Coast. The whole of SE Queensland has changed dramatically since you were here, Its millionaires row for anyone with a house on the beach, the population is tipped to double to about 4m by 2015. The Gold Coast is wall to wall high rise, tourists and traffic. Brisbane is gridlocked and we are not far behind but resisting like mad. There is still plenty of exotic scenery here, pineapples, sugarcane, strawberry farms, rainforest and laid back living, but suburbia is slowly enroaching. Nambour where I work went from 4 sets of traffic lights to 9.

I know the cost of sailing in shallow water. One of the last times I sailed my QB2, before it got a terminal case of rot, I landed nose first on the bow when we hit a concrete block with a centreboard sailing under the Maroochy River bridge. I was more intent on making it under the highest part of the span and didn't keep an eye on water depth. Tore a chuck out of the board and I got off with a bloody nose. On one other occasion a mate and I were sailing my maricat off Townsville in 30plus knots and were hurtling back downwind towards the beach in 4 foot waves. I scoured half an inch off both rudders tying them down to hold them in the water and we hit bottom just before i was going to turn into the wind. There was an almighty thump and we got tossed off and landed in a heap. My local fibreglasser said I had completely smashed a 3 foot square section of hull and left it like tissue paper. Luckily he was teaching students and needed boats to work on so I paid only the cost of materials. The blow to my ego was sitting on the beach for the next two weeks of glorious weather watching everyone else out sailing.