Surfers-Paradise

5th & 6th March 2010 Friday was another day of jobs, an hour in the Post Office filling in customs forms for our stuff we were sending home, shopping for a mozzie net, then packing ready to leave the next morning. The following morning we were off to Brisbane. After managing to get completely lost and going all the way into the city then back out over the Story Bridge we eventually arrived at Nathan and Anna’s in Cooperoo. The weather was pretty awful by now, with even more rain so we spent the afternoon chilling before enjoying a wonderful evening with the now famous Morris pizzas - yum yum. ...

12th & 13th January 2010 Something that Aunty Mary had asked us to do while we were here was to help sort out a laptop for her and Billy, so yesterday morning was spent shopping for the right computer. With our mission achieved we returned home. Then we went for a drive around Sanctuary Cove, which is an exclusive development on the Northern Gold Coast. Ed had just finished saying how we hadn’t seen any Kangaroos and disputing their existence when we rounded the corner and there were three of them sat in the middle of an island on this exclusive housing development looking just like large bunny rabbits. ...

6th January 2010 After an absolutely freezing night on the train, where we did manage to sleep for a few hours, but that was all, we arrived tired and smelly in Brisbane. From here we got on a train to Nerang where we were met by Aunty Mary and Billy. We went for an eat all you want breakfast buffet at Jupiters Casino even though it felt more like lunchtime for us. A really lovely breakfast followed by a swift tour of Broadbeach, Surfers Paradise and the Spit with a good look at the beach and the sea which was a little rough. ...

11th January 2010 We’ve booked a hire car for the next three days so as we can go out and explore areas around Surfers Paradise, particularly the Hinterland, which is quite beautiful. On picking up the car we decided to go to Mount Tamborine, driving up through the bush with fantastic views of Surfers Paradise and the massive Q1 building standing out on the horizon. We drove through Eagle Heights, which is the largest settlement up on Mount Tamborine with its 500m street of art galleries and cafes and headed for North Tamborine. ...

7th January 2010 We had a wonderful night’s sleep - well overdue after last night. This morning we headed into Surfers which is about a half hour walk from Aunty Mary’s. We sat on the beach for a while which was fairly busy but with small bluebottle jellyfish in the water, we decided to give the swimming a miss. Then we wandered around the mad, touristy place that is Surfers. ...

5th January 2010 We were off to Surfers Paradise today, but our train didn’t leave Sydney until 4pm, so we still had some time to do a bit more sight-seeing before we left. Our first stop was at Central Station where we offloaded our bags ready for the train later. Leaving the station feeling a lot lighter footed, we took the thirty minute walk to Sydney Fish Market. We’d read up a bit about the Fish Market, and knew that they offered a tour, but it only ran a couple of days a week, and we were too late finding out about it before we were leaving for Surfers. We still thought we’d head on over and take a look. On arrival, we found that there were a number of restaurants here, and lots of fishmongers selling an amazing assortment of fish, from salmon, to lobsters, and live crabs. Unfortunately there was no public viewing area of the trading floor that we could find, which was a little dissapointing as it was really what we had walked over to see. Perhaps we’ll have to try to schedule in the tour next time we’re in Sydney. ...