There's an old photograph in my top drawer ... of a boy and girl sitting on a rock wall at the beach.

They are about two years old, with buckets and spades in their hands and big smiles on their faces.

You can see we were having fun ... building sandcastles, feeding seagulls, searching for crabs under rocks, for shellfish in the tidal pools.

The girl was my cousin Denise and each summer all of the uncles and aunties would set up camp near each other.

From time to time I would pull the photo out and look at it – remember those days of playing in the sun.

Those memories came flooding back recently with a phone call: “Is that you Erle? It’s your cousin. We’re at Cotton Tree Caravan Park. Have you got time to catch up?”

Did I have time? How many years had it been since I had seen her? I must have been in London when she got married.

To my surprise it was the first time Denise and Mal had been to Queensland on a caravan holiday.

Not like so many others who head north about this time each year to escape the icy blast of winter.

So it was good to get their reaction.

We talked for hours the first night – mainly about what had become of Auntie Jean or cousin Laurie but also about what each of us were doing, how life’s journey had treated us.

The next day I took them for a drive – to give them a taste of the Sunshine Coast.

They were amazed at the amount of building and development that was going on.

It highlighted the way we can easily take things for granted.

And it reminded me of the way the Coast has changed over the years.

To me some turning points were the completion of the coast road from Caloundra to Noosa in the ’70s.

Then in the ’80s came the widening of Mary Street in Noosaville, of Aerodrome Road in Maroochydore, and Caloundra Road.

Not so significant at the time perhaps but to me it seemed as if the Coast had well, grown up.

It meant we had passed those days of simply being a series of seaside towns and that our beach culture had linked up with commerce.

Then there were other reminders of our past when workmen would dig up old bridge pilings while putting in new roads along Gympie Terrace.

These were the old timber bridges that linked Noosa Heads with Tewantin ... after you had taken the ferry across Lake Doonella.

The amount of building on the Sunshine Coast not only amazed Denise and Mal, it reminded me of the return of that migratory species, the crane.

No, not the long-legged water bird.

The tower in the sky that seems to define the level of growth everywhere.

It seems they have returned to much of Australia’s eastern seaboard. Just like in the early ’80s and late ’90s.

Apparently there are more than 20 on Brisbane’s skyline. Probably about a dozen here on the Sunshine Coast.

And who knows how many at their favourite nesting ground, the Gold Coast.

All that said, there’s another photo I look at now. The buckets and spades are missing. Instead, the two of us are enjoying coffee and croissants at a beachside cafe.