Blogs from Stradbroke Island, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

What better than to take the water taxi to Stradbroke Island on a sunny Sunday morning. The day promised blue skies and temperatures of 24', not bad for an autumnal day! The water taxi is just like the City Cat Taxis on the river and with their powerful engines we crossed the waters to Dunwich in 25 minutes and found the bus to Point Look Out waiting to take us the 20 minute drive to the north of the island. Since staying at Domain we discovered we can walk along Home Beach with their beautiful silver gum trees creating a speckled back drop to the beach. Then on to Cylinder Beach around the rocky headland and onto Deadmans Beach, a smaller sandy beach surrounded by mangroves and gum trees. Ahead of us the red rugged cliffs ... read more

In late 2002 we decided to take all three of our offspring on a serious overseas adventure together for the first time. We eased them into any potential culture shock by spending the first week still in our homeland, at the Couran Cove Resort on South Stradbroke Island just north of the Gold Coast. It mightn't have been all that far in distance from "the Coast", but we might as well have been on the moon for all the resemblance it bore to the Coast's high rise glitz and glamour. Couran Cove was renowned at the time as one of the country's first eco-friendly resorts, complete with recycled water, solar panels, no petrol powered vehicles (it was only accessible by boat/ferry), no plastic bags, solar hot water and low rise buildings. We stayed in a small ... read more