Yes, we took on a couple of the Worlds at the Gold Coast. If I look at my bank balance, I'd probably say that they won. We put up a good fight though!
DAY 46 (9th June): We drove up from NSW and went straight to Sea World for the day. Coincidentally, this was also the coldest day for Brisbane since 1916. We shivered our way around the grounds - I think in our heads we were just refusing to believe that it could be THIS cold in Queensland!
Seeing as we were there twice, I'm going with the montage for the day :)
Stayed at a caravan park that was right on the beach at Miami - lovely! :)
DAY 47 (10th June): Pete got woken this morning by visitors from the west - Mic, Pete and Colette came over for the weekend to celebrate PB's birthday. A little early....! That was SIX MONTHS of successful secret keeping, people! SIX MONTHS! They'd also sorted passes to the worlds, so off we all went - Movie World today! And twas a lovely day out too - blue skies and all. Here look - this is where we stayed:
It was a stones throw from the beach:
Early morning shot....
And the group shot before we took off.....
Again, busy day at Movie world, am going with the Montage to vaguely cover the adventures....
The following photo does deserve a place on its own:
We have a similar photo with Mitchell from SeaWorld. Miss J INSISTED on going on this, and then proceeded to try and climb out on numerous occasions during the ride. You'll notice my arm around her in the pic! Child #1 refused to go on anything more scary than the bumper cars, and couldn't even be persuaded when told that Child #2 was braver than him. Ah well. We skipped a lot of classes in parenting 101.....
And that was Gold Coast day 2...
DAY 48 (11th June): We returned to Sea World today, as the west coast visitors hadn't been there. On the way, there was ANOTHER BIG THING!! I hope you all get just as excited as I do when they come up! It was the Big Golf Ball at Broadbeach:
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| Credit to the photographer, Pete H, who took this out the window as we were driving! |
So the Seaworld with the Western visitors Montage would be:
The boat ride (centre bottom) may not have been the best choice of rides to go on for the day - it was another cloudy, cool day, and they had water cannons on the boat and on shore - Pete and the kids got well soaked - mostly by Pete H, I might add! I saw how wet they were, and went and bought two souvenir beach towels...... :) Just to give you some idea (and cos I know y'all love this video thing!)
Damp, hey?
DAY 49 (12th June): The PLAN for today was to head inland a bit and go and have a look around Mt Tamborine, which is meant to be quite pretty in a rainforesty/mountainy kind of way. Again, the weather conspired against us, with predictions of showers and possible storms for the day. So, we then thought we'd go bowling. Turns out EVERYONE goes bowling on the Gold Coast when its raining. So, stuck for choices, and as we had some unlimited entry passes still in our hot little hands......... we went BACK to Movie World! Woohoo!
Montage number four:
This was our last day on the Gold Coast, and where we waved goodbye to Mic, Pete and Colette - was great to catch up with them!
We headed north again and having not really planned much further than the Worlds, I thought I'd better check a map book....... and found....
Well, of COURSE we had to stay here! No apples in this one though, just lifestyle.... :)
DAY 50 (13th June): Today we did a bit of a driving tour through the Glasshouse Mountains - weird looking mountains that are leftover volcanic plugs from millenia ago. Went to the town of Glasshouse Mountains and met THE most helpful tourist bureau worker in Australia, I swear. When she found out what we wanted (which we really didn't have that much idea of) she sat down while I was looking at postcards and mapped out a whole day for us!
These are the Mountains:
This was from the first lookout we went to, and is really six photos. They are quite strange - just jut up out of the otherwise quite flat landscape. They're leftover volcanic plugs, FYI...
Then we took off on our driving tour - this one WAS Pete's idea too.... :)
Another lookout - the view to the coast.
In a town called Mileny, they have a rainforest reserve - the Mary Cairncross Reserve. Its really pretty. I force-marched the family into doing the walk...... bwahahahaha! This was a tree with an interesting fig twisted up it.
The family delighting in the scenery..... no really, they were..... delighting!
Mitchell delighting in the cool root structure.......
Now, I know you are all really impressed with this rainforest, and would love to see it, so I have come up with an online tour for you...... I promise, it'll be just like you're walking through yourself... :)
There we go - how was that?
It was parked behind us. I thought it cool.
I do have to mention that Mileny had an ice-cream shop that has THE best ice-cream. It is fabulous. Nom-nom-nom....
This is the Glasshouse Mountains all in one shot.
Went to look at a waterfall.....
Saw some very active wildlife...
Mt Tibrogargan, the largest of the mountains.
After our big day out, we went and stayed with Anna, a friend of mine that I hadn't caught up with for years. There was a little bit of drinking, we took some photos, and the best one taken was the one with the bunny ears. Great. Might be some proper Photoshopping later!
DAY 51 (14th June): We got up this morning and thought "Crikey! What a GREAT day!" So we went to Australia Zoo.
The dudes on the left are saying "No! Ve are not talkink to YOU!" to the kookaburras.... Okay, maybe they're trying to be logs. All injured, so were in an enclosure with no cage.
Us chillin' with the Irwins. This is the memorial statue.
They had keepers wandering around all day with different animals that you could look at. The kids loved it.
They reckon crocs could grow to this size. The reason we don't see any is because of how close they came to extinction in the 70's.
Otters..... awwwwww..... so cute......
More animal petting - this was a two year old croc.
Feeding the elephant. J got to the front and wouldn't have a bar of it - I had to!
Obligatory crocodile feeding shot....
Wombat on a leash...
The kids loved the kangaroos, who were quite unfazed by kids patting them!
Crazy Crocodile Hunter ride to finish the day off.
DAY 52 (15th June): We headed off today towards Gympie, looking forward to passing some of Queensland's many Big Things. Three of them. And three out of three were in a sad state. Disappointing, Queensland!
The first was the Big Pineapple, which has gone out of business. Although this was the sign that was pinned up:
I don't believe them. It looked pretty much deserted. Which was unfortunate, because I believe that the Big Macadamia Nut was in the complex somewhere, and we couldn't see it!
Then it was onto the Big Cow in Nambour. It too was part of some complex that appeared deserted. Poor Big Derelict Cow.
This was the Big Shell in Tewantin, near Noosa. It admittedly was in okay shape, just needed a bit of a paint touch up. It is still in use, I believe. We, of course, visited on a day that it was shut. That just goes without even saying by now...
Our luck changed in Eumundi, and through no planning on our part, we managed to be there on a day that the markets were running (Wednesday!). What amazing markets! They are HUGE! I of course could have spent a good few hours, but there is only so much market that two little kids can take, not to mention a non-shopper husband! hehehe! J got her face painted though....
Happy family :) This was on the way up a mountain. The kids are happy because we allowed them to rest.
The drop - hard to get an idea - it just dropped straight down from behind the rocks, those aren't SMALL trees in the background either.
Mr Cranky-pants being given a piggy-back down.
View on the way down.
Okay, so now I'm only 5 days behind. I'll get there. Sometime.......
Hope you're all well - we're looking at a 0 degree night tonight, so hope you're all warm as well!
K, P, M, & J x
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