Brisbane & The Gold Coast

17th Feb

Brisbane

Flew into Brisbane and checked into our hostel the Brisbane Backpackers resort.

18th Feb We went discoveing Brisbane today. Saw the hot spots -Southbank with its man made beach, really cool, the Japanese Gardens, the botanical gardens and the other side of the river, the markets at Fortitude Valley. We stayed at `Brisbane Backpackers resort`-nice hostel, it has a pool and a tennis court, so we kept ourselves entertained with that for a few days.O! and the bar with happy hour - nice!  

21st Feb We decided to head to the Gold Coast for a few days, sweet as! We picked up the car at 1pm (a spang new Toyota Corolla, automatic...nice one) and headed for the coast. Our first destination being Byron Bay. Bryon is only about two and a half hours from Brisvegas, so we got there in no time heading south on the Pacific highway. Byron is a lovely town, it has a big village feel to it. Its fine and lively, and the beaches are amazing too. Obviously the weather is spot on, sweet as! We just strolled around for the evening and chilled out for the night in a few hot spots in Byron! The next day we hit the beach. O! it was great to be here, We hired a body board and caught some waves! Hit the town again that night and had a great time. Here we stayed at a great campsite by the beach and practically in the middle of the town, really cool.  

Going for a dip - Byron Bay

23th Feb Today we decided that it was time to try this surfing lark, so we signed up and off we went. What a great experience, obviouly we had to get a lesson first and guess what we both stood up.....in the end. It was alot of fun and our guides were the real thing we have to say. It was hard work and after 2 hours in the water, we were both quite exhausted. O! did we mention that today was 40 degrees, way too hot for us, we both lashed on the suncream but spending a day surfing leads to sunburn! After our lesson we headed to `Surfers Paradise` for a big Saturday night out. When we arrived there , it was everything we expected, the beach and the surf here is really amazing, serious WOW! factor. This place is your typical tourist resort though, high rise buildings (sky scrapers really) all along the miles of straight beach front. By the time we had dinner and a glass of wine, we were both looking like lobsters and falling asleep, knackered after our day of surfing , so we said we`d call it a night, snnoooooooooooozzzze!

Serious Competition - Surfers Paradise

24th Feb Went to the beach in the morning on Surfers Paradise. Great atmosphere around with different ocean swimming races on, really high standard here as well even a Commonwealth games medalists competing , great to watch it. The heat was too much though so we said we`d go back to the campsite across the road and go to the pool here in the shade! O! this was really nice, as both of us were a bit burnt from the shocker 40degs the day before.  That night we headed into town again and met up with Haulie Burke from Shanballa and his gang, needless to say we had a great night with them.

25th Feb Went to a water park today called `Wet and Wild` really great fun. The `Tornado` was the best slide here.

Surfers Paradise

  26th Feb Dropped the car back to Brisbane today after our few days on the Gold Coast of Oz, WOW! what a place. It was raining in Brisbance, why did we complain about the heat of the previous few days!  

27th Feb Back in Brisbane, we planned our trip up the Sunshine Coast to Cairns with Peterpans travel agent.