Queensland Trip - Gold Coast

After Northern Queensland around the Great Barrier Reef took our breath away, we caught our breath in Gold Coast. We took it pretty easy there...sometimes that is needed on a vacation rather than always go-go-go! Gold Coast is in Southern Queensland and one hour from Brisbane - the 3rd largest city in Australia and where much of the highly publicised floods were this past January.

Our hotel was at an awesome spot near the Pacific Ocean. You just opened the back gate and walked out onto the sand. Gold Coast gets its name from the "golden" sand along the water. The sand was golden and soft on the feet. The city had a Florida feel to it and even had theme parks like Sea World. It's nick-named "Little Las Vegas" because it's considered glitzy.











Then we made it over to Byron Bay which is just over the state line in New South Wales so not all of our trip was in Queensland. Captain James Cook named the town after John Byron, circumnavigator of the world and grandfather of Lord Byron, the famous poet. Cape Byron is the easternmost point of mainland Australia. The view from the lighthouse was very nice.






We tried Byron Bay cookies on our domestic flights with Qantas so we had to get some while in Byron Bay. We were disappointed to hear that there were no factory tours and that we had to go to, of all places, a BP gas station to buy the cookies. I hope that was chocolate and not oil.


For our last night in Gold Coast, we decided to stay in the mountains. We drove our little car up the very steep and often one-way road up the mountain. At least we got to see kangaroos on the ride up. We stayed at O'Reilly's Resort which was pretty cool, literally. We made it at dusk and saw all of the wallabies hopping about. The place is still family operated, and we watched a short film about a plane crash on the mountain years before in which one of the O'Reilly sons searched and rescued two of the plane crash victims. Interesting. Then we took a bird watching tour in which birds of all colors ate out of our hands.










In the bottom left-hand corner is one of many turkeys we saw here...we know where to pick up Thanksgiving dinner now.

Queensland Trip - Great Barrier Reef

We had been waiting to swim near the Great Barrier Reef since we arrived in Australia on New Year's Day. We finally did it on August 30th! We almost missed out too...we arrived to the Adelaide airport on August 28th thinking we were going to fly out to Cairns, Queensland which is a city close to the Great Barrier Reef. Long story short (and leaving out a lot of poor customer service details), our flight had been cancelled that morning and we were crap out of luck with no flights getting us up there that same day. We worked for about 4 hours trying to get our flights, hotels and rental cars all one day later (maintaining our rewards points). We were worried that we would have to push our entire trip back to another month, but we worked it all out. After much frustration and poor customer service from the airlines, we finally flew to Cairns the next day. We certainly learned patience at that moment, but the airlines is still getting an unsatisfactory letter :)

Moving on to what you only care about...pictures of our visit to the Great Barrier Reef in Northern Queensland. We went on a day trip and arrived to a pontoon along the "Outer" Great Barrier Reef. We took a tour in the glass bottom boat to see the reef which was our first glimpse of unique looking fish.

Lunch was well...like eating in Australia. So we had a quick lunch and put our lycra suits on to snorkel (water was a little cold so the suits helped). Most people suggest to scuba dive, but we wouldn't have had time to get certified and dive as neither one of us have our certification already. Anyway, we still enjoyed it minus all of the salt water we ingested. We did see colorful fish, eels and a huge fish that looked like a shark but we were told it wasn't. I guarantee you we would have put our Michael Phelps flippers on to get back to the pontoon if the shark theory had been confirmed.


































Since we stayed at a resort in Port Douglas about an hour north of Cairns, we had to drive the rental car back to Cairns to fly out for our next destination in Brisbane, Queensland. Along the drive, there are a few nice beaches and scenic views. The landscape is beautiful with blue/green water lined up to green mountains. Very nice.













Very kind of the Queensland government to warn us about crocs!