North Qld should be a TAB warmer than here

HOPEFULLY, God willing, weather permitting and virus restrictions exempting, as you read this I should be winging my way to balmy North Queensland for the weekend.

I’m looking forward to thawing out and injecting some cool Toowoomba cash into the Townsville economy – well, the Townsville hotel and TAB industry at least.

Whenever I tell people that our mob is heading north for one of our sporting weekends they always say things like, “Oh, the weather will be beautiful up there, so nice and warm”.

“The beaches will be nice and the water pristine…”

The thing is, we’ve been heading north during the winter just about every year for the past 15 years, and we are yet to set foot on the sandy beaches let alone get in the water.

The last time I went for a dip off Magnetic Island a whale watching boat came along side and I distinctly heard the tour guide over the loud speaker say: “Oh look, it’s Migaloo!”

Since that, the thought of diving into the sea is about as inviting as a weekend in Melbourne.

No, a weekend away for us usually consists of doing the same things we do in Toowoomba, only in shorts, thongs and T-shirts.

We stay on The Strand across the road from the beach and “surf” so it’s not as if we don’t see the beach, we do, we just don’t touch it.

Only last week, a body washed up on the beach at The Strand and I can just imagine had that happened this weekend, plenty of people in Toowoomba would have assumed it to be one of us.

Not likely, not unless one can roll down onto the beach from the Seaview beer garden across the road.

The police wondered if the chap may have fallen from a boat or something and that is the one thing we do get to do up there is board a boat – even if it’s only the ferry across to Magnetic Island.

But even then we do pretty much what we do here in Toowoomba – only in shorts, thongs and T-shirts.

We go to one of the two pubs on the island that has a TAB and spend the afternoon losing on the horses while enjoying a few cool North Queensland ales.

Undoubtedly, some time in the afternoon someone will invariably say: “I wonder what they’re doing back Toowoomba”, all the while knowing exactly what they’re doing back in Toowoomba which is exactly what we’re doing on Maggie Island – betting, losing and drinking.

In our defence, we usually take in a Cowboys game while we’re up there.

And, we had planned to see the Cowboys play the Knights on Sunday.

It’s not our fault some virus caused the NRL to change the draw with the

Cowboys now playing on the Thursday night – the night before we fly north.

I’d like to say that it’s the first time that has occurred but it’s not, even pre-virus we booked a weekend in Townsville only for the game (Dragons no less) to be played on the Thursday night when we flew up on the next day.

We’ve often thought of starting up our own travel agency – Loser Tours – and taking groups of people up to the warm climes of North Queensland during the Toowoomba winter.

“Hop aboard Loser Tours, you’ll miss more than you’ll see but you’ll have a good time – and it’s warm!”