week 12 - Joanne

Do you have times in your life that you look back on and just laugh?

For me one of those times was around the age of 18.

I had gone to stay with a girlfriend’s mother at the Sunshine coast for holidays. She had a border named Joanne staying there. Joanne worked at the local police station. We were both the same age and got on really well. So much so that not so long after this holiday my parents had put their caravan on site at Cotton Tree Caravan Park and I would go up at least once a month to spend it with Joanne.

One of my funniest memories with Joanne was a weekend that I took another friend Karen up to stay in the van. The weekend didn’t start off well as I had decided to take up a friend Paul and his friend as well. After spending about 3 hours with Paul’s friend we had enough of him. One of those real dickheads, so I told them I was taking them back home.

We had left Ipswich around 8 on the Friday night, gotten to the coast, and then around midnight drove them back and then drove back to the coast again. Rather a dangerous thing to do and I was nodding off driving back, luckily hitting the gravel would wake me.

The next day we went to pick up Joanne from her work. She was telling us about a flasher that had been seen a few times near the caravan park. Bob the sergeant there, told us we were NOT to go searching. Yeah right!! We were three young girls out for adventure.

That afternoon we went to the spot the guy had been seen. We made ourselves comfy while we settled in for the long wait. The time was passed with us laughing and catching up on what we had been doing lately.

After about two hours we decided that we had spent enough time waiting and had enough of watching the young guy fishing near us, even if he was a hunk.

As we got ready to go so did the guy fishing. The next thing he turned and was flashing us!! Well what happened next was so funny. Joanne screams out “Bring out the police dogs” and the three of us start chasing him. Poor guy got the fright of his life; he dropped everything and took off with us in hot pursuit.

There was never a hope of us catching him as we all ran weaving through the caravan park and then along the road until he got to his car and took off, as we were laughing too much. We then went to the police station to say we had spotted the guy and what sort of car he jumped into.   Bob asked if we had gone looking for him? But we assured him, in our best angelic voices, that we were just going for a stroll when we spotted him. I don’t think he believed us.

Another time with Joanne, her and I decided to go on a road trip for a few days and visit relatives. First off we left the Sunshine Coast and headed towards Mundubbera where one of my aunties lived.

The road to there was soooooooo boring. Paddocks, cows and more cows were the view. We amused ourselves by beeping and waving to every car and truck that we encountered on the road.

Mundubbera is a very small country town. You know the sort, a couple of banks, a store with everything, small grocery store and a lot of pubs. Joanne and I decided to head off to the pub that night. Well to be honest we headed off to a few pubs that night as we did a pub-crawl to every pub there. Met some local lads who accompanied us to each pub and played pool with us.

By the time we got back to my aunties the local gossips had already rung her to say where we were and whom we were with. They all knew me as I spent a lot of holidays there over the years and an old school friend used to live there as well.

Next it was off to Biloela and Joanne’s aunties. The journey here just about had me having a heart attack. I went to sleep in the car and Joanne drove. I woke to her screaming and me opening my eyes to a semi starting me in the face. I started screaming before realizing that it was a semi, towing another semi backwards and Joanne had moved my car up so close it was like it was going to hit us. In the end we were both laughing so much we had to have a rest stop.

It was a more subdued time at Joanne’s aunt’s house, with us playing tennis with her cousins and just having a look around.

From Biloela we headed over to Mackay and then down the coast road back to the coast. At a roadhouse on the way we stopped to grab some lunch and took it to a rest stop to eat. The food was disgusting and was in no way edible. At the rest stop were some people in a caravan and a juice delivery guy having lunch. Joanne started yelling “I’m hungry” and it went into us pretending we were starving, but no one took any notice of us, or if they did they probably thought we had escaped from the asylum.

We had a lot of fun, Joanne and I. Everything from going and seeing Le Girls with the free tickets given to the cops to going out with the guys on duty and drinking wine out of the blue lights on top of the police cars.

When I found out I was moving to the coast with work I rang Joanne straight away to tell her. Only thing was she had news of her own, that she was moving down my way, as she had just been accepted for nursing training. We kept in touch for a while but then as life does you end up going separate ways. But the one thing I know is I will always remember the fun times we had together.