Changing times
When you haven’t seen someone or something for a year or so your sense of observation is more acute. It’s harder to notice gradual change if you see something every day.
But if you haven’t seen someone for a year it’s easier to tell if they have put on weight or turned grey. It’s the same with places.
We have returned to the same holiday house at Falcon we stayed in last January. The house hasn’t changed, but the neighborhood has.
The vacant block next door hasn’t been developed yet, but it’s now for sale. A new subdivision has been opened up for development between the house and the nearby shopping centre, called the Olive Waters Estate. It’s not built yet, next year I expect it will be.
We visited the Jolly Frog restaurant on a canal between the estuary and the Indian Ocean. The development on the other side of the water was startling.
Since last year, nothing has closed as far as we could tell. Most of the new activity was in construction. In addition to Hungry Jacks, Noodle Wok and Red Rooster there is now a McDonald’s as well. That’s progress, I suppose.
Falcon still has a nice mix of modern buildings and beach shacks. I wonder how long that will last.
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
