Blogs from Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 8

SO! Today I paid for my passport - $208.00 dollars, $2.50 for bank statement with Toowoomba address, $10.00 for parking, almost 90 mins of waiting, and 3 different service people, 4 phone calls clarifying whether I had to make an appointment or not. Apparently this is the easy part, so I shouldn't complain - but really, I think it could have been a LOT simpler. Poor Jade had to fill out my application twice (the second time with black pen haha!). Ah well it is done now and I should only have to wait 2-3 weeks and it will be delivered! I'm very excited, this will be the first tangible step towards my trip. Also, it is exactly 1 month until I start my TESOL course. I have just started looking in Toowoomba for Vietnamese community ... read more

After such a great day yesterday it is now time to get back in the van to get to the next place. We left the campsite by 9:30 and started to head up the East Coast towards Surfers Paradise where the first of the theme parks are. The drive was about 320kilometers so a easy ish day compared to some. The weather was over cast so also Mum didn't feel like she was missing out on any sunning time!! We had a stop at a view point and decided to have our lunch and take in the view. Even got Korki out for a photo!! Once we got to Surfers Paradise and got ourselves checked into the only caravan park in the area we decided to take a walk into town to get some bits for ... read more

We spent the week in the suburbs of Surfer’s Paradise with a family and saw quite a bit of rain. We painted fences, did some housework and looked after their 16month old girl. When the sun shone we got to see the beaches which go on for miles. It is a popular place as lots of Australians go to the Gold Coast on their holidays. They kindly let us borrow their car to see the national parks in the area - Tamborine and Springbrook. We got to see the sights and visit the waterfalls. We also went to a multicultural festival where we got to visit Iran, Saudi Arabia, hear Japanese drums and watch African singers. Didn’t think we’d be doing that in Australia! ... read more

The Sunshine Coast was back to living up to its name and was lovely and warm for a couple of days, so I got some great beach time. The Main beach is soft pale golden sand that has been banked to a perfect angle for sunbathing - its so comfortable I even managed some time laying face down, which I normally hate to do. I don’t know why I bothered to spend so much time describing Noosa in the last blog - all I had to do was show the photographs from the Lookout at the top of the National Park. On the Wednesday I took a half day trip to the Eumundi markets in a small inland village. The stalls in the central section are the Original Market where the rule is that they can ... read more

Philip now has two big toes on his right foot which looks rather deformed so he could easily pass himself off as Queenslander who seem to all be as mad as a box of frogs. After another disturbed night at the yoof centre (one more night woo hoo.) we limp over to the sea front to read the local newspaper where we are promptly and rudely told to move on as they are setting up for some TV show there (today or something) That old excuse. Philip makes an appointment for Thursday with a podiatrist so he will have good four day s to cure the toe before we run on it, falling that Philip can always cut it off. we limp back into surfers rather dejected there is nothing to distinguish surfers the town from ... read more