Monday 5 August 2013
Under normal circumstances, given an early departure, you’d fancy your chances of making the drive from Mission Beach to the Skyrail terminal in Caravonica in time for an eleven o’clock booking, but the day after a traffic accident doesn’t qualify as normal circumstances, and it’s hard to make the early departure when you have issues with telecommunications.
They weren’t exactly big dramas, but through the night I’d had suspicions that I’d misplaced my mobile, so once I’d got up and showered I’d set about conducting a reasonably thorough search of the environs. When that filed to deliver the desired result, it was time to try the inevitable work around and ask Madam to call me on her mobile.
The silence that followed certainly suggested a lost phone, but a minute or two later an incoming call on Madam’s phone revealed mine was sitting behind the counter at the cafe in Cardwell. Fine, we now knew where it was, and we’d be able to collect it on the way home on Wednesday.
But it did raise some issues. Madam had been using her phone to time some tai chi related exercises, and when the police officer at the scene of yesterday’s accident had asked for a contact number her phone book wasn’t working. No problem. Unlike many people, Hughesy knows his phone number and duly rattled it off.
Now, around eighteen hours later, that contact number was, effectively, uncontactable. The solution was obvious. Ring Ingham police and give them Madam’s number. That meant we had to access her phone book, which refused to play nicely, so it was a case of phone a friend to find the number.
These things take time and require explanations, so once we had that sorted and settled we were around the time when we’d planned on hitting the road with one more call that needed to be made.
We hadn’t contacted the insurance company, and when you do things like that you’re almost invariably embarking on a lengthy process. I’d ended up doing the talking after the initial contact had been made, and had great difficulty extricating myself from someone who wanted to sort out all the details of the claim process right there and then.
Given the fact that we were just on fifteen minutes late at Caravonica Hughesy is totally convinced a departure at the intended time and a right hand rather than a left hand turn out of Cassawong Cottages would have landed us at the Skyrail terminal right on schedule.
As it was, we turned left, got held up at roadworks on the corner and again near Mission Beach School, and that, along with the fuss over Hughesy’s mobile was probably the difference.
We’d skipped breakfast at Mission Beach because we knew there was a faster option at the bakery at Mourilyan, which has become a regular stopping point when we pass that way, and pies all round made an interesting cultural experience for The Visitors.