December Bus Trip

We had 45 people go (which is a good number) on our Christmas lunch at Coolum Beach Hotel bus trip on Friday 18 December. We headed off just before 8:30 AM from Redcliffe and picked a few more up at Deception Bay before going up the old Bruce Highway through Burpengary, Caboolture and Beerwah before stopping for a nice morning tea at a little park in the centre of Landsborough.

Then back on the coach joining the highway for a short time before turning off and travelling up over Buderim down to the Sunshine Motorway. We hit stop start traffic for about 1.8 km on the bridge over the Maroochy River for an accident just after the bridge which had one lane closed. Then continued up the coast road past the Sunshine Coast Airport through Mudjimba onto Coolum Beach for our lunch stop. They had the tables all nicely decorated for Christmas. They served up a very nice Christmas lunch including dessert and we even had a visit from Santa who handed out some little packets of chocolate. A great meal and drinks had by all.

Back on the coach where we drew the raffle prizes of which we had 6. Jenny Ryan won the bottle of scotch, Barry Smith the bottle of red wine and Alma Klatt, Don Gibson, Earl Regan & Mick Flannery each one a mystery prize, thanks to you all for supporting the raffle which helps pay for some of the trips. We headed off down the Sunshine Motorway and a big billboard advised that there was an accident on the Bruce Highway near Elimbah and to expect long delays, so we took the Roys Road exit just before the highway started to bank up for 22 Kms of stop start traffic. A lot of people had the same idea and we banked up for about 1.5 kms trying to turn onto Steve Irwin Way at Beerwah which by then was also stop start, so we decided to go across the road through Beerwah and down the Old Gympie Road at the back of Glasshouse and Beerburrum towards Caboolture before getting onto D’Aguilar Highway then re-joining the Bruce Highway at Caboolture. It sure was the scenic way and a lot longer in distance but a lot shorter in time. Our troubles were not over as we hit slow traffic again, but it was not long before we turned off onto Deception Bay Rd arriving back in Redcliffe about 4:20PM, a little bit later than we expected when we left Coolum, but a good day still had by all.