Do you ever get that sense 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!

Crikey, I have just worked my way through that whopping big manual that came with the VCR recorder and now they tell me they’re finished, kaput, and 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.

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

And how about fast food?

Hell, I remember when fast food was a Chiko Roll and a can 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.

Hey, what about GPS and smart phones?

Talk about change, I never had any problem finding the corner store, but seemingly the young and not so young need one to navigate around the local mall these days.   And 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, change…

On a recent road trip, dubbed “Ocean to the Outback” we visited my mother’s hometown of Bundaberg situated on the east coast to the north of Brisbane. Fay reveled in the visit and we spent time visiting the property that her Grandfather owned and ran cattle on when she was a young girl. “The Springs” as it was known due to a spring fed creek on the property is now a scout camp.

As a young adult she worked in the Metropolitan Hotel in downtown Bourbong Street, the epicenter of the town. Mum insisted we 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 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 a counter-lunch.

But I’m digressing and Janet 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 owner who loved to hear about how the pub was in the days gone by.

As we sat down to our can-of-lunch and a few beers, Mum looked around and said that it had all changed, it wasn’t the same anymore, she said. You couldn’t see the old stairs that took you up to the accommodation rooms and the old kitchen had 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, enjoying a meal…

And of course, drinking an ice-cold beer!

I’m betting nothing has changed at “The Met” in the last hundred years…

Do places or life generally really change or just our perspective?

Photos: Baz – The Landy