Blogs from Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 2

After a slightly late get up (9-ish) and breakfast in the hotel room to save money (eating out in Gold Coast is shockingly expensive) we were met by the same taxi driver as the previous day to take us to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary Review Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary is a fairly large zoo, what I would consider medium sized, and I spent around five hours there for a slow, relaxed visit. The zoo has over 100 species, and a list can be seen here. Although there is nothing that is really super rare like at David Fleay, there are a few unusual species and many that were new for me. The entrance area to the zoo isn’t so impressive with a huge area taken up by the ‘photo with a koala’ area that had ... read more

Saturday morning we got up and made all our travel arrangements for the month. Sigh of relief. Sydney next weekend (opera house, harbor bridge, Manly beach) and Cairns/the reef the weekend after that (+/- the rainforest and aboriginal walk). I scoped it out online and found us some decent flights and we found decent hotels (NO Jetstar!!!) Not much is driveable. Size-wise, it's similar to being in the US. We're visiting the equivalent of Atlanta and Chicago from DC (distance, not activities haha) For the weekend, the Mater hospital (where Jim works on Wednesdays) was having a big conference on the Gold Coast. It mainly targeted general practitioners, and the goal was to teach them more in different topics. Lots of lectures and hands on. Skin was just one of the topics, but that's the one ... read more

We travelled from Noosa Heads on the far north of the Sunshine Coast to Burleigh Heads on the far south of the Gold Coast. Most of the drive was on freeways and toll roads, including a massive bridge that gave us the biggest hill of the day. It was weird to be struggling to climb over a bridge. Since we did not have a transponder for the toll roads we took a photo of the sign that told us how to pay the toll. Our caravan park in Burleigh Heads was right on the beach and we had to drive through the downtown shopping area to get there. We were surrounded by high-rise apartments and everything was very developed. In spite of the spectacularly developing thunder clouds we took a walk around the area to see ... read more

We left Tweed Heads and drove on the old highway towards Murwillumbah. I love this road beside the Tweed River, cane fields and Mt Warning in view ahead. When we were at the Murwillumbah Art Gallery earlier in the year, we stood on the balcony and were very impressed with the green, lush country spread before us, and this was where we now were driving, towards the mountains. We were going to the Natural Arch, now called the Natural Bridge. We drove about 20 kilometres through pretty farmland and then up steep hills, poor motor home! once more crossing the border into Queensland. We stopped at the carpark and took the path. I love walking in cool dense rain forests and this was beautiful. Tall gums, strangler figs, vines, palms carrying birds nest ferns high on ... read more

After a fabulous cooked breakfast of bacon, eggs and a heap of other stuff by Marcus, we packed up and headed off to find the highway to Brisbane. We planned to have lunch somewhere close to Brisbane but we couldn't find a park anywhere so we just kept on going towards the Gold Coast. We thought we had taken a turn off the highway to a park / reserve but it ended up being a new housing estate (there's a lot of new houses up here) but we stopped and had lunch anyway. We found one of those huge shopping centres and wandered around there for a while and then headed off to find our caravan park. Forgot that it was now peak hour traffic and it took ages to get anywhere. Finally got to the ... read more