A tourist in my own town

How often to we get so distracted by daily living, that we forget to actually live? 

Only today I got this in an email from J.A. Rock: But how do you live right next to the Great Barrier Reef and never mention it?! 

To which my answer has to be: Meh. It's some coral and some pretty fish. Seen one natural wonder of the world, you've seen them all. 

Familiarity hasn't bred contempt, exactly, but it has bred a kind of shitty lazy attitude, and brings me, kind of, to something I was thinking the other day: Why have I never set a book where I live? 

I live in tropical North Queensland, Australia. It has palm trees and oceans and reefs and rainforests and shit. People pay a lot of money to visit places like this. They buy postcards, and t-shirts, and, inexplicably, stuffed cane toads. 

I think that it's about time I tried being a tourist in my own town, and saw it through fresh eyes. Because, guess what? It's kind of nice: 

If you guys are wondering what brought this on, it's that J.A. Rock who is currently fighting the forces of Mordor in NZ, is heading to Australia in November. So yay! 

I guess she doesn't just exist on the internet after all. 

Also, I guess I should clean my house.