Well, Smart State stalwarts can be forgiven for feeling a little disoriented this week! It seems like only yesterday that we all carried ourselves off to bed as we usually do, taking it for granted that tomorrow would be more of the same old, same old song remaining the same.

So we all fell asleep, just like we had every day for the previous nine years, somewhere in the vicinity of St Petersburg . Yet the very next day we all woke up to find out that we had been press-ganged overnight to the newly commissioned Naval Academy of Annapolis.

Not only that, we were already sailing farther away from the familiar shore, as the Ship of State set forth on a new voyage under the command of one Captain Bligh!

What happened to St Petersburg and our favourite haunts along its prospects? How did we end up being conscripted to Annapolis? When had we been stowed aboard and away, to sail off for what and why? Will we live to tell the tale of this new maritime adventure with Captain Bligh?

Admittedly, St Petersburg was a somewhat divided and sometimes driven kind of town, although it was never less than lively, even if it never quite managed to be rated as The Great.

Imagine a place with a distinct blend of its namesakes in Florida and Russia and you might just begin to comprehend St Petersburg. Imagine living in a cross between a Romanov dynasty palace and a Floridan retirement condominium.

Imagine having both a getaway dacha by the sea and a gulag archipelago in it. Imagine Miami Vice comparing its virtues and sharing its turf with the Moscow Mafia. That's the media tartare saucy kind of town that St Petersburg had become over the last decade.

The late Jeff Buckley might have sung "It's Never Over" with conviction and passion, but now that St Petersburg has receded over the horizon at our stern, we're well and truly over it too!

Anyway, it's almost eight bells already, and we've got a whole deck to scrub clean of any evidence and barnacles to scrape off the hull, and sails and nets to repair, and lots of chores, drills, duties and more to do. We can tell we're really in the Navy now, with all the whistle-blowing to go by.

We're curious to know whether Captain Bligh will merit close comparison with her naval ancestor, or whether she will be a swashbuckling Hornblower instead. What did she mean when she said "Fletcher Christian has been seconded to help 18 Indonesian sailors return safely home"?

How is tying us to the yardarms, making us walk the plank, keelhauling us, flogging us, locking us in the brig, cutting our rations, and other incentives like succumbing to scurvy, supposed to stimulate an even Smarter State of mind?

Just where are we bound? What sea battles, storms and reefs await us? Will we ever make it to a tropical island in paradise so we can all be treated to its delicacies, then tempted and jolly rogered by the most inviting contour guides who inhabit it?

Captain Bligh has only just announced our destination and purpose. Our mission is to capture the dreaded Noosa Pirates – no, not the fearsome footy club - to be amalgamated dead or alive! Couldn't we just skip all these gory bits and move right on to Pitcairn Island, or better yet, Tahiti?

Aaah!! Queensland really is - as they say it is - "bountiful one day, mutinous the next".