#44 & a gift of Mooloolaba.

I realize not a single soul give's a rat's ass about it, but the number 44 has held great significance to me since Reggie Jackson signed with the NY Yankees in the winter of 1976 and debuted with the Bronx Bombers in the championship season of 1977. He'd worn #9 with Oakland and Baltimore but that number was taken by the Yankees outstanding third baseman Graig Nettles, so he switched to #44, a number I'd go on to wear whenever possible throughout my athletic career. I followed Jackson's tumultuous 5-year stint with the Yankees like a hyper-nervous parent watching a daughter perform her first ballet recital: each at-bat had me leaning towards the TV, palms sweating, heart racing, my limbs paralyzed with dread and hope. Ridiculous, of course, but at the time it seemed necessary, like Jax needed me to suffer for his sake.

Which only proves I've been a nutjob from an early age.

I turned 44 yesterday. As Aradhna's still in Melbourne I had to do something special for myself, so I took advantage of Brisbane's stellar public transport system and traveled to a beach paradise called Mooloolaba along Queensland's magnificent Sunshine Coast. The trip began with a 6:30 am train out of Central Station in Brisbane's CBD to the 'hub of the Sunshine Coast hinterland', otherwise called Nambour. Its Main Street (left) was mostly asleep at 8:30 on a Saturday morning but I found a bakery offering decent coffee and flaky apple turnover that filled me up for the bus ride to Alexandra Headlands just north of Mooloolaba. All told the trip took a little over 3 hours and cost less than $9. Of course I'd rather have driven but our car's in Melbourne and public transport is always a writer's friend -- so many stories to overhear, engage in or create from scratch. Plus, this bus ride featured a completely unexpected encounter with the Big Pineapple. A pair of Asian girls got off to see it, allowing me to snap this photo of Queensland's most beloved 'big' attraction from inside the bus:
Hopped off the bus along the esplanade at 'the Alex' and immediately came upon this view looking south towards the beach at Mooloolaba (right). The sun was hot -- this area is considered 'sub-tropical' as it sits just south of the Tropic of Capricorn -- but an onshore breeze cooled things nicely. I walked the top of the headland as it gently descended to Mooloolaba's beachfront and quickly understood its popularity and roaring Lonely Planet appraisal (I don't go anywhere in the Southern hemisphere without consulting LP). Its fish-hook-shaped stretch of white sand ends at a jettied inlet for Mooloolaba Harbour. Scrub trees offer shade along the beach's fringe from about its mid-point down, but most folks opt to linger at the dozens of cafes, restaurants and shops (left) across from the beach's northern stretch. I changed into board shorts at a luxuriously appointed changing facility and walked south, past Mooloolaba's main beach (below) and to a slightly more secluded spot between a turquoise Pacific Ocean and tranquil scrub.Several hours of swimming and walking to the southernmost tip of the beach later, I showered, changed, grabbed a lovely lunch from a busy outdoor cafe and bought a few souvenirs 'for the folks back home'. Walked to 'the Alex' for a bus to Landsborough Station and the trip back to Brisbane. The bus quickly filled with 'schoolies' heading to the Gold Coast (southeast of Brisbane) to celebrate the end of Year 12 (in US-speak, their high school graduation).

On the train I took a seat opposite a large 18-year-old of Pacific Island appearance. He asked if I was going to Brisbane and we didn't stop talking until parting at Brisbane's Central Station 2 hours later. Too much detail to include in this post, but 'Paul' or 'Pao' was born in Papua New Guinea and moved to Noosa, QLD when he was 13. He's one of 9 sons of 2-time PNG prime minister Paias Wingti but didn't mention that until late in the conversation. We talked about rugby union (which he plays), NFL football, growing up in PNG and Noosa, how to hide a machete in cargo shorts, what happens if you drink a litre of cooking wine on an empty stomach, his idea to offer himself as an informer to Gold Coast police to earn booze money, the initiation rituals of his family's tribe in PNG, how his great-grandfather saved his tribe from slaughter early in the 20th century by bargaining for firearms with white settlers and killing each and every one of their enemies .... and so on.

I doubt a 12-year-old Joe Wall would have imagined spending birthday #44 in such fashion. More importantly, what would Reggie Jackson think of it?

What's nice about reaching the age of 44 is not giving a damn what Reggie Jackson would think of it.