Everything has changed - really?

Photos and story: Baz – The Landy

XPLORE: thelandy.com

Do you get the feeling that wherever you look these days something has changed, perhaps for the better, often for the worse?

Seemingly, technology has made life easier for us, if you know how to use it!

I have not long ago worked my way through that whopping big manual that came with the VCR recorder and now they tell me they’re finished, kaput…useless!

TomO, the crown prince, said it belonged in a museum anyway, adding that in fact that most of the contents of our house were starting to resemble a museum collection.

Crikey, isn’t that something else that has changed, the cheek of the young people these days…

How about fast food?

I can remember when fast food was a Chiko Roll and a bottle of coke from the local fish and chip shop. These days we’ve got so many choices that a bloke would starve before he got around to making up his mind.

And hey, what about smart phones with GPS enabled?

Talk about change…

I never had any problem finding the corner store, but seemingly the young and not so young need a smart phone to navigate around the local shopping mall these days.

Besides what was wrong with the old paper maps that you could spread across the bonnet of the car and then spend an hour chasing across a paddock after that big gush of wind turned it into a sail?

But they call this progress…

On a recent road trip, dubbed
"Ocean to the Outback" we visited my mother’s home town of Bundaberg which is situated on the east coast to the north of Brisbane.

My mother, Fay, revelled in the visit and we spent time visiting the property that her grandfather owned and ran cattle on at “The Springs” when she was a young girl. These days it is a scout camp.

Fay, as a young adult worked in the Metropolitan Hotel in downtown Bourbong Street, the epicentre of the town and it was inevitable we would stop, have a beer and a good old-fashioned counter-lunch.

I remember as a kid having a “can-of-lunch” there. At least that is what I thought they called it. It was quite a few years later when a cute barmaid in a small country pub fell into stitches of laughter when I ordered a can-of-lunch that I made the discovery; it was called a counter-lunch.

But I’m digressing and Mrs Landy is peering over my shoulder asking about the cute barmaid…

There was much reminiscing as Fay walked through “The Met” and we were fortunate to spend some time with the current owner who loved to hear Mum’s stories about the pub in days gone by.

Casting an eye around the main bar of the Met as we sat down to our can-of-lunch Mum reminisced…

“It had all changed”.

“It wasn’t the same anymore” she proclaimed…

“You can’t see the old stairs that took you up to the accommodation rooms and the old kitchen has gone”.

Sometimes things have the appearance of having changed, but maybe when you delve just below the surface you see that nothing really has changed after all – maybe it is just a matter of perspective!

As I sipped my beer I looked around and thought…

“Surely nothing has changed”…

After all, the main bar was full of people chatting, laughing, and enjoying a meal…

And drinking an ice-cold beer!

For my money, I'm betting nothing has changed at "The Met" in the last hundred years...

Does anything really change or is it just our perspective that has changed?

Just in case you were wondering “Baz – The Landy” came about as a consequence of owning three Land Rover Defenders, but as you can see this has now changed...

And yes, thank you, I've recovered fully from the experience!

But “Baz – The Landy” reference has stuck...!

Cheers, Baz – The Landy, Outback Australia…