Wheeler, are you a journo or something?
aircraft takes sudden lurch to the east
or
we hesitently taxi off, taking a backtrack to end up into wind this time, but pointing North
or
take a pretty cool nosedive to get under the cloud
or
fairly hairy scud-run dodging around cloud and staying visual (sort of) most of the way at (guessing) about 2000 ft
. Would have to be reasonably flat terrain up there to avoid the GPWS going off.
Not saying that this happened, but perhaps there was some inflight malfunction which required a diversion to Maroochy in order for the crew to assess the situation on the ground and perhaps apply an MEL to continue in VMC to get you to your destination.
The Dash-8 can take off with 10kt of tailwind most of the time, and in certain circumstances can land with up to 20kt of tailwind in accordance with the Flight Manual Supplement. Sometimes it's better to takeoff (payload-wise) with a tailwind. A good example is Canberra on a hot day. It is regularly more favourable to take RWY 17 with a tailwind (and often we do it). Otherwise you might have to leave several PAX behind.
The policy on holding fuel is that you carry what ever is required in the FCOM plus contingency fuel. The Dash is good in the fact that under most circumstances we can carry a reasonable amount for "mum and the kids". Your crew on the day probably had round trip fuel and then some, hence no refuelling in Bundy. My personal policy (if it can fit) is round trip plus 30 mins on top of whatever's required. Most of the time you can do it (at least in the southern states). Saved my bacon a few times now, just like your crew probably did the other day.