I had a day staycation this week and it made my soul very happy as I took a trip down memory lane, filled with shipwrecks and quicksand.
My girlfriends surprised me with a trip to Noosa North Shore to go camel riding.
Yes, camel riding!
“We are going to place you on Big Bob. He is a former race camel and can go pretty fast,” the local greeted me as I arrived to take a unique ride up the beach.
Of course I would get the biggest camel of the pack. Of course they would pick the most uncoordinated gal to get on the back of the huge four-legged animal.
So, I did the logical thing and whispered in Big Bob’s ear: “Hello, darling boy! Don’t you have eyelashes I would kill for, you sexy beast. Be a good boy and don’t kick me, spit on me or kill me, my dear camel friend.”
And with that, Big Bob and I hit it off and enjoyed a leisurely stroll with my girlfriends up the beach.
I felt like a kid again.
There is something about being with an animal that makes you feel young at heart.
My first memory as a child is just up the road from this stretch of paradise, north of Teewah beach.
It used to be home to the famous shipwreck, Cherry Venture.
I have photographs of my mum looking dangerously sexy in her crocheted bikini and sporting a killer tan, a ciggie and not much else as she watches my siblings and I climb the massive old shipwreck.
Cherry Venture was a 1600-tonne cargo ship of Scandinavian origin.
It ran aground at Teewah in 1973 and remained a local landmark and tourist site for 34 years until its controversial removal in 2007.
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I remember those days well – when we used to visit the shipwreck, even though I must have been about five.
It was more fun than the local park as we would suck on our frozen Sunny Boys and eat our Jelly Tip ice-creams as we climbed through the rusty ribs of the wreck.
But the big memory from when I was little comes from the nearby quicksand that I got stuck in.
I started screaming to be rescued.
Mum must have put down her ciggie and chardy long enough to pluck me out to freedom as we have a photograph of my entire family laughing, with me crying and looking in fear at the quicksand.
Only family can laugh at you with love when you feel like you are living a real-life scene from the movie Jumanji.
Sami Muirhead is a radio announcer, blogger and commentator. For more from Sami, tune into Mix FM.
