Redcliffe

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On Sunday we drove out to Redcliffe to investigate the Aerodrome where we fly out on Wednesday for Lady Elliot Island. Redcliffe is a little to the north of Brisbane and one of the closest beaches. When we were in Brisbane years ago we used to drive there and go swimming. There's a long beach area on the east side facing Moreton Bay and a bit on the south. The airport is on the north side on Deception Bay and there's quite a bit of swamp area there. Redcliffe is not an ideal spot for swimming — the water here is quite shallow and a bit muddy, it might be reclaimed mangrove swamp as is much of the area around Brisbane, but there is a long sandy beach. If you want nice sandy beaches you ought to go south to the Gold Coast or north to Bribie Island, Coulandra and even further to Noosa Heads.

Redcliffe used to be a fairly quiet and, frankly, uninteresting modest suburb. But things have changed since we were last here. We easily found our way to the airport (it's about 45 minutes by car from our AirBnB in New Farm) and went looking for a nice restaurant we had read about along the water front. Today there seems to be an event/street fair of some sort with streets closed. Streets that are much more interesting, more trendy, than ever before.  We can't get close to the restaurant we hoped to go to and Kate is unable to walk very far. So, we end up driving along the water front and stop at Scotts Point which is near the south end of the eastern waterfront/beach area. Having not been able to get into the fine restaurant we had planned we ended up having "Fish & Chips" from a small shop that was incredibly busy.

After a long wait at the chip shop we enjoyed our lunch and met even more "Bin Chickens" who wished to join us for their dinner. On the way back we explored the Sandgate beach area (south of Redcliffe and north of the airport) before heading off to meet with Ross and Bev,

That evening we met up with Ross and Bev's family for a pizza party at their son Chris's place near Griffith University. It was a fun family gathering with a lot of very nice kids. Chris, who was just a kid not that many years ago, has a son of his own — River is a young active footballer (footie?). Naomi's son is an informed well spoken young man and Jacquie has a newborn of her own. We even ended up talking over Skype (or some similar technology) with Tim, the elder son, who is a lawyer in Sydney. It's a well connected supportive family that we've known for years now.

Now, Kate has been struggling with nerve pain where she had an ankle replacement last year. I've explained the limitations to Ross and he's kindly waiting for us at the curb when we arrive to help Kate in. All of that has worked well. Unfortunately, when we were leaving in the dark, Kate tripped in the driveway, fell and wrenched her other ankle. Over the next few days we are coping with this set back and preparing for our trip to Lady Elliot Island — should we stay or should we go and forfeit what we've paid?

We got Kate home and into the house that night. We bought her crutches the next day (Monday) from the pharmacy down the street as she was simply unable to walk unassisted. At Bev's urging we ended up taking Kate to a sports/physiotherapy clinic in our neighborhood. We had been thinking that we should go to a Hospital Emergency but Bev was right. A podiatrist examined her injury, put her in a removable plastic boot and sent us for an MRI at another clinic to make sure the injury wasn't as bad as he feared. He ended up giving us a detailed report on the injury and the MRI results that we shared with our doctor when we returned home. She had never seen an MRI or an MRI report of an ankle injury; I guess they're too scarce in Ontario to waste on ankle injuries. Fortunately, though we weren't much out of pocket, it was fully covered by our travel insurance.

I worried about Kate's injuries but she soldiered on.