Our Year Away from the U.S.A.: Queensland Trip

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.