Great advice from all. I use a combo of all of the above. A decent SE change can be seen hiiting from gold coast all the way up.
Reading wind then matching it to who is at the beach helped me learn. Always knew it was likely to be good when the regular legends are at Brighton at same time. It was like they had extra senses or could smell the wind change coming.
As a fallback there are often posts in Brisbane Kiters FB group page and Jason from Briskites often posts a local condition update which really helps.
Goodwinds to you and all.