I got up early last weekend and came to our Maroochydore office to check some emails. As I was driving home past the airport at about 5.45am, a flash of light burst from a bush beside the road.

“Damn,” I thought. “I’ve got just about no points left on my licence and now I’ve gone through a radar trap.”

Something in the back of my mind made me go around the block and check out the source of the light. My car is laden with spotlights – it makes me look more manly – so when I pulled up, I lit up the area with my halogens and found there was an old man, sitting on a kitchen chair under a bush, holding a dolphin torch scaring people into believing they’d been caught.

I continued on my journey, shaking my head trying to understand the strange situation I’d just encountered.

I turned the corner and headed past Surfair. At the bus stop there were two young women in their bra and pants changing from evening dresses into day clothes.

Ah, the Sunshine Coast … it takes all types, doesn’t it?

In all my glory for Origin
I don't know how you watch State of Origin at your house, but this is how it goes at mine.

We all have dinner together and while that happens, the girls continually ask why football is so important and what the attraction is for us boys.

After we have responded appropriately with clever answers like “it just is”, the girls go upstairs to watch the TV there, and the boys and I stay downstairs to catch the game together.

Max, 13, and Jackson, 10, generally fall asleep before half-time, leaving me sitting alone on the loungeroom floor in nothing but my undies and a T- shirt with beer in hand, turning to my left and saying to no one, “Wow! How was that for a tackle”?

Brush with fame
A couple of weeks ago I stood beside Pee Wee Wilson, from the Delltones, at a bottle shop in Coolum while we chose which beer to drink. I so wanted to say “gidday, Pee Wee”, but I lost my nerve and didn’t. B

ut it was a different story at the Caltex Peregian the day after. I was headed into the shop to grab a bar of Club chocolate (it’s a diabetic thing) when the guy approaching me thrust out his hand saying, “Jamie, I’ve wanted to catch up with you since you’ve been up the Coast.”

I shook his hand and said, “and your name is…?” He answered, “Shane Urban, Keith’s brother”. Talk about a brush with fame.

I shook the hand of a man who was in the room when Keith honed his guitar licks. Pretending I actually knew Keith, I blurted out, “say gidday to Keith for me will ya?” and continued through the door knowing full well when Shane finally says to Keith, “Jamie Dunn says hi”, both he and Nicole will go…. “Who”?

Why the 5-star treatment?
Isn't Australia wonderful? We spend over $4 million on legal costs for an advocate of terrorism to stand in the dock and say, “yes, I’m guilty”, and then we charter a jet to fly the convicted Taliban sympathiser home to Adelaide to serve out his nine-month sentence.

Tell me, where is the incentive for ordinary people who just obey the law and get on with their lives? If you’re working with the government and reading this column, please send $4 million and a lear jet to “PO Box 187, Noosa Heads 4567”.

Hitting right note
Here's my advice for any fathers out there who have had to work when one of their children is doing something at school.

This is what happened to me with my son, Max, who plays guitar. There was a school concert on Thursday night for the parents of the children in the music course.

I had to host a charity screening of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 for the Leukaemia Foundation on that very Thursday night. Getting my priorities right and being the father I am, I went to a music shop and bought Max an amplifier and gave it to him saying, “Here’s a present, I can’t make it tonight.”