Rambling for Kirwan Uniting Church Keeping in Touch newsletter, 2 May 2021

While you were enjoying John Short’s uplifting service last Sunday, Leisa and I were staying in a (pet-friendly  -  we took Yannie and the cockatiels) beach shack at Flying Fish Point outside Innisfail. It’s a lovely, very quiet indeed, little place, a hidden gem. But Innisfail is worth visiting for its own sake, instead of just whizzing along the outskirts on the Bruce en route to Cairns. The interesting town has art deco architecture (including a somewhat-OTT art deco water tower), a well-stocked (with fresh, locally-caught) seafood shop - trawlers pull up at the back - and is close to fun places like Murdering Point Winery and the El Arish Butcher. It’s the second time that we’ve stayed at Flying Fish Point, we love it, and the dog is getting used to it.

The shack is smack bang on the beach, separated from the Coral Sea’s encroaching waves by just a berm of rocks and grassed earth. Twice a day, at high tide, anyone sitting outside on the deck would have a salty shower as spray leaps over the berm. But we couldn’t do much deck-sitting, because we had several hundred mils of rain during the weekend. For those of you who are familiar with FFP, the headland and offshore islands to the right were completely obscured all weekend, save for the briefest of gaps in the deluge. But we still had a wonderful, restful time. I passed much of that time just gazing through the open doorway, sheltered from the half-hurricane, at the awesome ocean.

And we sang spontaneously a grand old Welsh hymn, expressing in verse the psalmist’s assurance (Ps 136) that “He spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever.”

O the deep deep love of Jesus,

vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,

rolling as a mighty ocean

in its fulness over me.

Underneath me, all around me,

is the current of thy love;

leading onward, leading homeward,

to thy glorious rest above.