The Gold Coast

We have moved up the Australian eastern coast to south of Brisbane which is the area called the Gold Coast.  We are actually staying in Mermaid Beach, but this part of the coast is one community after the other, definitely vacation territory.  Everything is geared to water activity.  Surfer's Paradise is one of the communities/beaches and the beach is lined with high-rises and restaurants.  Makes you wonder how they can keep so many hotel rooms filled, but I guess there is enough year-round traffic to keep them in business.  We have certainly seen lots of young adults and young families, even though their school season is still in.  (We have seen TV commercials and such gearing into the Christmas season, too, which is really weird when the weather is summer weather.)  There are some lovely, big houses jammed together along the ocean side as well.

The beaches seem endless and there are life-guard stations all down the coast.  The last one we saw was #38.  Surf rescue is important and they even have sports related to it.  We have passed more than one surf rescue school and we saw several groups in the water training.  They have competitions and everything.

If you go just a little west into the interior you get into hilly, wooded terrain with big open valleys left over from the active volcanic period of their history.  We came across some para-gliders taking off from a steep hill on one such excursion.  Maybe half a dozen guys took off or were gearing up to while we stayed and watched.  They waited for the right wind gusts, ran a little down the slope, and took off up into the air lift.  It was amazing how high they would go and someone told us that they could glide for up to 6 hours if they wanted to.  They sat in a big, complicated kind of sling.  Guess if you stayed up that long, you would have to make accommodations for personal needs.

We also toured a couple of national parks.  Their national parks seem more primitive than what we are used to with Yellowstone and Yosemite.  They are more like national forests.  Lots of waterfalls to hike to.  The foliage is more like rain forest, too.  We took a walk in one, a private attraction called the Skywalk.  It is a raised open-grid walkway and gravel path that takes you through the upper rain forest on the walkway and down into the lower part on the pathway.  Gives you a better appreciation of rain forests and they are trying to promote understanding to also promote preservation (while making some money at the same time).  It was really interesting.

can you see the joey in her pouch?

We toured the David Fleay Wildlife Park, too.  Saw a lot of unique animals and birds up close and personal.  The wildlife intrigues me.  It is just so different.  They had lots of wallabies in the park and we found out the difference between a wallaby and a kangaroo.  The wallabies are smaller, much smaller in some cases, and have fuzzier fur.  We saw many varieties including one that they thought was extinct for 30 years before being rediscovered and one that lives in the rocks.


This guy is a cassowary bird.  It looks like something prehistoric.  It is a flightless bird with powerful feet that remind me of an ostrich.  It's funny topknot is hard and acts like a helmet when they push through think forest undergrowth.  The park's pair were in mating season.







Just some pictures of some of the different birds for a flavor of the country.