A day at the beach

Following torrential rain, we decided to spend the morning at the beach. The rain was a bit scattered so we figured we could dodge the falls. So we packed dad’s wheelchair into the boot and took off for King’s Beach…via the real estate to pay the rent.

Dad’s wheelchair is a lovely little sporty model that comes apart for ease of transport. The wheels slip off, the feet rests slip off and the rest folds up. Even so, the main section is rather heavy. This makes it difficult for mum to lift into the boot of the car. Subsequently, it rarely gets used. Dad reckons mum’s a rotten driver as well, forgetting he has feet sticking out the front.

He thought he’d take a gamble that my driving is a bit better. To be fair, I’m not as prone to distraction as my mother is. (I know I’m going to get a whack for that.)

Anyway, we pulled into a very handy disabled car space, unloaded the sporty little wheelchair and headed over to the boardwalk. The wind was ferocious and the sprinkling of very big raindrops, occasional, though this did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the hordes of little kids rushing into the sea and acting like so much washing in a tumble dryer. Talk about having no fear!

There’s twice as many kids but half of them are underwater

We left them to it and continued along the boardwalk. While the boardwalk makes it very easy to move along the coast, the deep drifts of sand reminded me of the piles of snow that British cars have to plough through every year. Dad reckons it’s because ‘they’ have stopped employing someone to sweep it up and keep the paths clear. The downhill bits are okay but I needed mum to push me up some of the deeper sections.

The wind helped a bit when it was blowing in the right direction but then this just made dad colder so he wasn’t as keen on it as I was. Mind you, he was wrapped up in a jacket with a rug over his legs while I was in shorts and t-shirt. According to mum, dad’s feet are always like blocks of ice. Given the temperature here in Queensland, I’d quite like that. This is nothing to do with his health though as he’s ALWAYS had freezing cold feet.

Feet and sand drifts aside, we managed to reach a cafe where we set ourselves up at an outside table, defying the elements and ordered tea and coffee.

Mum’s funky sunnies

There was a bit of discussion around mum’s sunglasses which Denise and Trace think are very 1970s. I told her I thought they looked well cool and were actually retro rather than old fashioned. I fancied modelling them as well and let mum use my camera to show the world how silly I can look if I really try.

Letting mum use my SLR – I reckon she did extremely well!

At one point, the rain decided to belt down, combining with the gale force winds, so we had to move to the high table, under the protection of a giant umbrella. While mum had some difficulty climbing to the top of her stool, it was dry and we could still watch the rolling waves.

Dad waiting for his cup of tea

Eventually the rain stopped, the clouds went away and we headed back to the car. A lovely few hours out for dad, though he did say he’d need a few days to recover now!