25 -  29 October 2013 - The Gold Coast



Harry, quite possibly the cutest polar bear cub in the world.

An advert running on TV currently describes the Gold Coast City area as Australia's Theme Park capital and that pretty much tells you all you need to know. The area is in holiday mode 24/7 and a total contrast to anywhere else we have visited on the Queensland coast. At its core is Surfer's Paradise (Surfers), a lively suburb full of high-rise apartment buildings, casinos, restaurants and any other type of entertainment you care to name.  

 

 

"Are you lookin' at me?" A penguin with attitude
at SeaWorld.

 





There's wealth and excess everywhere and over the past few years the area has experienced a property boom every bit as frothy as hotspots in the UK. You could easily spend over 12 million dollars on an apartment here. Well, maybe you could but I couldn't.

At the time of our visit the annual Gold Coast 600 V8 Supercar race was in town and the place was busier than usual. The organisers fence off sections of public road through Surfers and for three days the noise is deafening. If you're into cars, I am sure it's great, but we're not so we were grateful that our new friend and host Christine lived in a suburb far enough away for this not to be a problem.



Christine is cousin to Bruce (a long-standing Kiwi friend who we will be visiting in January) and she very kindly agreed to put us up for a few days.





Friends Helen and Christine. Helen is the shy one on the left.

She, in partnership with Helen (an aunt to the aforementioned Bruce and a friend we’d last seen in the UK around 25 years ago), also gave up lots of free time to act as our tour guides. We're grateful to them both, Helen for driving us around some of the area’s wealthier suburbs to see many drool-worthy pads and the pair of them for the whole day they spent showing us around SeaWorld Australia. The highlights here were undoubtedly Harry the baby polar bear and the dolphins. Leaving aside the fact that I usually don't like zoos on principle (and that is essentially what SeaWorld is, despite the owner's attempts to dress it up as conservation) we had a great time.

The dolphin and seal shows were certainly cheesy and contained patronising, Americanised scripts. However, it's unlikely that we will ever get this close to these animals in the wild so we ought to be grateful that we saw them while we could. As you can see, we got some great pictures. Yes, those are real dolphins in the air.









Our very own Flipper moment.

Our best encounter was well away from the shows and just as we passed one of the pools on our way out. A dolphin swam to the edge of the water and looked right at us. It was barely 2 metres away and returned several times to check us out. Priceless.

On our return Christine prepared a dinner of bluff oysters, kidneys with bacon & mash potato and pavlova. This too was priceless.



Us with Peta with the skyline of Surfers' Paradise
as a backdrop.

On our final day Christine kindly drove us into Surfers to get a closer look at the place, post races. It had a definite morning-after-the-party feel and most people we saw were nursing large coffees (and probably bad heads too). It was all very touristy, so we lingered only long enough to have brunch and a coffee. We were fortunate, however, to be invited to the home of Peta, a friend to Christine and Helen, who kindly let us use her wonderful rear garden for a photo opportunity across the Nerang River to Surfers.

I want this for Christmas.

And I want his job.


 

Tomorrow we leave for Brisbane. I will not be sad to see the back of the Gold Coast's high rise, touristy chaos. I will, however, miss Helen and Christine our friends.