A not-so Sunshine Coast weekend

Mom and Dad have been telling us for ages that the best bread you can buy – pretty much in the whole world, or so they’d have you believe anyway – is at Caloundra’s Bulcock Street markets on a Sunday morning. In all fairness, we’ve tried some of this mythical bread and I can confirm, it really is the best bread in the world, full of amazingness with just a pinch of fairy dust. And so, in order to obtain a loaf of it for ourselves, we joined Mom and Dad for a quick weekend break at their house up at the Sunshine Coast.

We went up the long way, via Steve Irwin Way with a detour to the Maleny Cheese Factory. At only $1, the yoghurt and museli cups have to be the absolute best value breakfast you could come by – though admittedly that was at half price since they were “about to expire” (in like two weeks or something). We thought of Susan as we sampled every build of cheddar cheese that they had, with the “Chili Con Cheddar” and “Wasabi Chedder” being the easy crowd favourites (where crowd == me).

Saturday’s weather was absolutely glorious, and we made the most of it with a walk down to the park at Bulcock Beach. Oscar was well impressed with the slide, and a significant bump in the middle meant he even got a little bit of air each time on his way down. The swings, however, got quite a disappointing review – they were clearly built for children somewhat bigger than Oscar and poor little Moo almost got lost in the big seat!

Sunday’s weather couldn’t have been more different – it was a cold and wet reminder that it’s definitely still winter. We all were quite chilly on our walk through the markets – well, all of us except Oscar that is, who was as warm as a bear cub.

Even though Mom and Dad insisted that the fruit and vegies were “not as good or cheap as their regular Sunday markets”, we thought everything was a total bargain compared to Woolworths. One market advertised that we could “Fill a bag of mushrooms for $3.95″ which I happily did, stopping only when mushrooms had started falling out of the top. When I went to pay, the stall owner gave me a somewhat disapproving look and asked, “You wanted a whole bag of mushrooms?”. Thinking I had done something wrong I mumbled, “Well, yes…” to which he laughed and said, “Well, this is nowhere near full! Let me fix it for you”. Relieved, I insisted that I had enough, but he replied, “Nonsense! You give us good money, we give you good mushrooms!” and somehow managed to fit about seven more in. Looks like everything this week will have mushrooms in it!

Sadly though, Mom and Dad’s bread lady friend was nowhere to be seen at the Bulcock Street markets! Our sole purpose for the weekend had been thwarted in one fell swoop! We consoled ourselves with some bratwurst rolls (yum!) and made our way back to the house to pack the cars just before the rain hit.

Still, we can’t really complain – a weekend away is a weekend away, and the lack of our magical fairy dust bread lady gives us an excuse to try again another week. Plus, as a huge highlight on our trip home, we finally caught up with Steve, Allie and Gabby – who was but a wee bub the last time we saw her five years ago!