We are an island nation…
So dare I say there is a valid reason for our obsession, with sun, sand and surf, and well with water generally, and this extends to anything that can be parked adjacent to it, floated on it, sailed on it, dangled in it, etc, you get the idea.
Now for most families across South East Queensland the Christmas/New Year break is the perfect opportunity to indulge in the sun, sand and surf obsession. Pretty much everything but emergency services and department stores close down.
So your average accountant, law firm, architect, government department etc, closes down from Christmas Eve (or the nearest Friday before if its close) until after the New Years Day public holiday (or the nearest Monday if its close).
This means that the bulk of the Queensland populace (Brisbanites) are free for about 10 days to indulge their sun, sand and surf obsession. Now in Brisbane that means if not leaving the country, the state or staying home (heaven forbid), while Brisbane does have a lovely river, it doesn’t have a real fair dinkum beach (sorry SouthBank).
So literally thousands of Christmas/New Year holiday makers have to make a decision, they can do 1 of 2 things. Either 1, go south to the Gold Coast or 2, go north to the Sunshine Coast. It makes little difference in both directions, sun, surf and sand abound!
While 10 days sounds like a lot, in the scheme of 52 working weeks, it's really not so much, so there is this unspoken, but very palpable sense of urgency to reach said sun, sand and surf. As a consequence the very minute these thousands of Brisbanites finish work on that Friday afternoon nearest to Christmas Eve, it happens…
There is a movement of the populace of Brisbane on a scale which rivals the migration of the wildebeest across the Serengeti, and unfortunately there is less bloodshed and carnage on the Serengeti, than there is on the M1 from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast.
By around 4:00 pm on that first Friday afternoon the M1 at the Gateway merge is at a complete standstill. At least 3 dozen road trains attempting to deliver food for “Woolworths The Fresh Food People” are caught in the fast lane, when everyone knows they are supposed to stay in the slow lane.
If that doesn’t produce a road rage incident involving a bloke with a long grey beard in a blue singelete, shorts and thongs carrying a stubby of Bundaberg Ginger Beer it will be a bleedin’ miracle.
Then we have hundreds of grey nomads with new 4WDs with huge caravans on the back, and side mirrors so wide they almost block the adjacent lanes and of course the obligatory tinny on the roof, are prime candidates to mame or kill themselves and/or others.
With caravans badly loaded and lots of inexperienced drivers when they do reach a speed over 60 kms, the whole thing is going to fishtail until it jack-knifes, take out the 4WD the caravan and anything else in range. This is the carnage of which I spoke!
Then there are the thousands of SUVs full of parents (but also containing what seems to the parents to be millions of screaming children in each SUV). The parents quite unreasonably thought if they left before 5:00 pm they would beat the worst of the traffic. Seriously! Did they not listen to last years traffic report or this years warning of traffic chaos.
It is impressive though that the average 5 year old can get car sick when the car isn’t even moving. Now the 3 year old needing to pee every 5 minutes, well that was just par for the course. But being able to see the McDonalds less than 1 km away and know that it could take at least an hour to reach it, that is just plain torture.
Scattered amongst this metal migration are a percentage of dodgy vehicles that really should have taken advantage of that pre Christmas tune up offered on TV, at what now seems a very reasonable price. Because after all this is Queensland, it is late afternoon, it is sub-tropical, it is bloody hot and very, very humid, momentarily it will rain. Hard!
And there it is the first few drops. As drivers and passengers alike frantically tune into the weather station they all get the news they fully expected. Yep, hail she is a coming and the traffic is moving slower than walking pace and there is still a good 100 kms to go and absolutely nowhere to shelter a vehicle from hail.
Is it too late to call up and get hail cover for the car?
Of course to add insult to injury our State and Federal governments have decided that right smack in the middle of the busiest time of year on our roads is always the very best time to do some absolutely enormous road works.
So now we have the road trains, the caravans, the SUVs, the breakdowns on the shoulder (well they would be on the shoulder if some lovely person from roadworks hadn’t put a bloody great concrete barrier up where the shoulder used to be) and now the drops of rain are getting quite large and the weather station on the radio confirms that the hail storm is unavoidable if you’re anywhere on the M1 heading north.
Remember that Serengeti metaphor I used? Once that hail starts to fall it will be carnage on the M1 on a scale unimaginable!
Some of our drivers will just ignore the complete lack of visibility and just keep on moving at a snail’s pace. Others will panic completely and try to pull off the road, assuming they are not confined by our friendly road workers and their bloody great concrete barriers.
Families in SUVs will try desperately to make it to the nearest Service Centre for toilets and fast food, definitely in that order, but who knows if they will make it, they may just be stuck short of the exits, with a sound level of bedlum unimaginable and that’s just from the kids not the hail…
And if you think the populace of Brisbane will have learnt anything from their slow and tedious trek north, I’m saddened to tell you they have not. Because this chaos will be repeated on the Friday afternoon closest to New Year as they return to Brisbane.
Like the wilderbeast, Brisbanites are programmed to indulge their obsession to seek out sun, sand and surf and they will continue to do so annually no matter what the dangers, obstacles or difficulties, just like the wildebeest crossing the Serengeti.