The deadline is the curse of the travelling class and some of those among us had to return to work, disappearing over the horizon, while we continued our leisurely amble down the coast.
Townsville is not very far from Cardwell, and we'd intended to spend an entire day poking around the place where I'd finished high school and shortly thereafter left my parents to raise my siblings in the sort of peace that settles on a family when one child removes itself from the mix. Possibly because of all the places I've lived, this one holds the record for "least time spent here" I felt none of that attachment that I'd felt in places further north, and if truth be told (as it always is) in its place was a curious unfamiliarity.
We might have spent a day on "the Island" as Magnetic is known, and a magical place it is too, but it had been a Covid hotspot just a week or two before and at that stage we were unvaccinated and quite unprepared to take unnecessary risk with that invisible enemy.
After a bit of a walk and morning tea on the waterfront and a drive past the house we once lived so that we could relay photographs to our ancient Matriarch, it became apparent that there was simply nothing calling us to stay longer.
So we didn't.
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