The new commute -- the more things change...

Well, actually, it was all pretty uneventful. The ride to Bundall this morning just happened. Actually, it's surprising just how much time I spent off Bundall Road, such is the surprising number of convenient side streets and so on in that area. At least they cut out some traffic lights. Locking the bike up didn't prove to be a problem either -- nobody whined about me locking it up in the "executive" area. Well, I guess that's a benefit of being so small that nobody cares all that much.

At lunchtime I took a walk to nearby Chevron Island. This is almost like an inner suburb of Surfers Paradise, completely surrounded by the Nerang River. When I lived there (a decade ago now), it seemed to be in a period of change -- a lot of the older shacks erected years ago were being demolished to make way for mansions on the waterfront lots, and apartments on all of the others. So today it was quite surprising just how little it's all changed. Even with the housing "boom" of recent years, Chevron actually seems to have stagnated. Many of the old surf shacks are still there, I thought most of them would be long gone by now.

Incredibly, my old apartment is still there. My family took that one at the time purely because it was cheap, but even that couldn't hold us there forever. We got out in late '96 because it was becoming unliveable. I got the impression at the time that it had potential to be a really nice apartment if the owner put some effort into it. The appearance from outside today indicates they probably haven't, but have done just enough to keep it intact so it can still be rented out relatively cheaply. Maybe they're just waiting for some developer to come along and make them an offer, if only so they can knock it down and build something else there. I'm genuinely surprised this hasn't happened yet.