Christmas greetings from Town of 1770 from Chloe and the Honeymooners

Welcome to Town of 1770, a small beach town halfway down the Queensland coast where we have been spending our Christmas holidays, sitting round the pool, eating lots of barbeques, drinking wine and interacting with the interesting locals.

Town of 1770 is a small town of a couple of thousand people conveniently located in what could politely be called the middle of butt-f*** nowhere. It is a town a bit part local hicksville, bit part hippie commune and a little bit touristy beachside location thrown in. The local natives are interesting because of their over friendliness and because of their common disposition to be missing some or all of their teeth. Whether this is genetic inbreeding, coincidence or the fact that the nearest dentist is probably 5 hours drive away in Bundaberg we haven't worked out yet. But despite what most people think, a lack of teeth is no drawback to smiling a lot and being friendly; this is a town where making any sort of purchase at the supermarket or the pub, say, will include a 'how is your day going?' where the asker of such question seems to expect a genuine in depth answer and not just a 'fine, thanks'.

Perhaps it is the gorgeous beach. This is the first place in Queensland south of the Great Barrier Reef which means that the miles of untouched, white sanded, tropical jungle-fringed beach are actually swimmer friendly. You can enjoy the waves and escape the heat without having to fear for your life because of the jellyfish.

Perhaps it is the pub; there is only one, conveniently called the 'Tavern' because it doesn't really need any other distinction. What the pubs in Town of 1770 lack in quantity, they more than make up in size. For this small town is serviced by what is possibly the largest pub in the world. Combining a restaurant, a bottleshop (off-licence to those who don't speak the lingo), dancefloor, betting shop and general drinking area where the toothless locals get to interact with tourists, this monstrosity of hideous architecture would appear to have no redeeming qualities. However, it is a wonderful place to while away a Boxing day afternoon, listening to the band, drinking a schooner or two and being chatted up (in Chloe's case) by an old man probably older than her father going by the name of 'Chaos'. What he lacked in teeth, looks and age, he more than made up for in generosity by buying drinks and swapping a packet of cigarettes in exchange for a dance. If I hadn't have given up smoking and Chloe hadn't got there first, I would have been his.

Town of 1770 is named after the place where Captain Cook first landed in Queensland during his historic voyage of 1770. This name seems to have been acquired to help the tourist trade as the actual name of the town seems to be Agnes Waters; small town, only one pub but two names, very confusing. I don't know who Agnes was or why her water was so special to deserve to be named.

We have adapted well to spending lots of time in a town with nothing to do. We have become excellent table tennis players, weed in the swimming pool a lot to stake out our territory, read lots of books, accentuated our white patches with a good tan, discovered that a diet consisting purely of barbequed sausages makes for very happy people and trying to cheer up the big fat dog that lives at the hostel who lost her friend recently and now looks permanently sad.

We have also rather unpatriotically fallen in love with TimTams. For those not in the know, these are an Australian chocolate biscuit remarkably similar to all intent and purposes to the good old British penguin biscuit of our childhood but without the rubbish joke about penguins. Yet for some reason they taste very good.

So there you have it folks. That was our Christmas. Hope you have all had a wonderful Christmas with lots of presents and things. I am off to have another timtam.

Lots of love

Jim, Donna and Chloe