Every second person I know wants to ‘go overseas’ (if they’re not every second person I have to reorganise them so they are every second person. But that’s OCD for you).

Anyway, I don’t get what all the fuss is about. Sure, they have ruins dating back to the cradle of civilisation; they have paintings that seem to show more than real life even shows; they even have awe inspiring cathedrals that defy gravity’s attempts to pull them down. But what’s their fishing like? Pretty ordinary in general.

Take the area most people seem to want to go to, Europe. Let’s look at the UK. “Oh, I’d love to see Stonehenge,” people say, “It would be fascinating to see the ancient home of the druids. And did you know it lines up almost exactly with the summer solstice?” Big deal! A bunch of rocks put on top of each other like giant Lego. Like it took some sort of brainwave to think of stacking one big thing on top of another big thing to make a bigger thing. And if it’s only ‘almost’ exactly lining up with the summer solstice, why isn’t it exact? It’s not as if they had other things to do, like go to work or the footy or anything. All they did was sit around stacking things and occasionally head out to grab a rabbit. You really want to look at that? I don’t.

Or how about going to the south of France? “Oh it’s beautiful,” the tourists say. Such lovely beaches. And the Mediterranean and those other seas over there… what gorgeous spots. Yeah right, like they could compete with Far North Queensland in any way, shape or form. And if you read the Bible, you’ll have read about Peter and his mates out fishing in that country a few years ago. Couldn’t get a scale apparently. Not a thing until Jesus came along and told ’em where to drop the net. Maybe he had a Lowrance, I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this; if it was fished out 2000 years ago, it’s not going to be a heck of a lot better now is it? And it’s all very well to ‘ooh and ahh’ over the scenery, but you can’t eat scenery.

Or you could go to Egypt. “You have to see the pyramids, they’re awesome.” More rocks piled on top of each other. Not sure why. Is that all they could think of to do in those days?

“Hey, what do you want to do today?”

“Ahh dunno, we could go and have a look at the new Pharaoh, or we could maybe pile some more rocks onto that pile we started yesterday.” Good grief!

At least they could put ’em on straight. Head over to Pisa in Italy if you want to go and look at a pile of stones that weren’t even put on straight. And that’s supposed to be a reason you must go overseas. I can’t work it out.

Now, maybe, I can understand going to Rome. Apparently they built these big stadiums and they used to FILL THE STADIUMS UP WITH WATER AND HAVE SHIPS IN THEM! How cool would that be? Imagine running a few pipes into Lang Park after the footy season and filling her up so you could take the tinny down for a spin. It would have to be everyone clockwise or everyone anticlockwise. But there’d always be some clown wanting to head the wrong way.

So I could maybe see the point in going to Rome, but apparently the stadiums don’t hold water anymore. You guessed it, the stones fell over. Must have been hard to get good help back then too…

But anyway there’s pressure on the domestic front to head overseas in the next little while to look at towers or paintings or rock piles or similar such things. Personally, I’d rather head up to north for some jack action but that isn’t being looked on kindly. But I’ve been thinking there might be a way around this. What if I head up to Mossie, borrow Roy’s endloader off the cane farm and heap up a pile of rocks near the boat ramp at Salty Creek? Wouldn’t that make us both happy? I could even make them lean over a little bit if that would help make it more realistic. Or at a pinch I could even line them up on the summer solstice. Or at least nearly line them up. Have to keep it realistic now don’t I?