TROPIC THUNDER

THE AIR IS thick with promise. It’s 4.00am on what should be a beautiful summer’s day in Queensland’s south-east corner. You’ve seen the images on countless tourism ads – blue skies, white beaches, and genetically blessed models with infuriatingly upbeat demeanours beckoning you to join them. There will be none of that today. What we will be experiencing instead is a selection of the very best roads this region has to offer

I’m standing at Narrowneck on the Gold Coast as a starting point. The name of the beach may be foreign to you, but you’ll have seen this piece of bitumen before. Each year (once in a century global pandemic notwithstanding) it is transformed into the back chicane of the Surfers Paradise street circuit. A right, left, right, left complex that Supercars drivers enter at 240km/h before launching – often literally – over the kerbs and tyre bundles. My track-ready steed for the day, the Porsche 718 Cayman GT4, won’t be performing any such heroics, even if the gutters here are still lined with tell-tale red and white kerbing.

The only onlookers at this hour are a few overly enthusiastic joggers. It’s still ‘oh god why am I awake o’clock’ on a Tuesday, and I come up stumps trying to reconcile why someone would do that to themselves. But my biggest concern is the storm front. That cursed storm front. Remember how I said this should be a beautiful summer’s day? It