Explore!

Location | Gold Coast, Australia

The day started out with a boat tour of the Gold Coast harbour. We went on this long yacht with another tour group. On the top deck, the skipper was driving the yacht and I decided to make conversation with him. We talked about Australia in general, life, adventure traveling. He’s originally from New Zealand, but has lived in Australia for the majority of his life. He’s normally an engineer, but part-time he drives boats, especially tours like the one we went on. The silliest thing on his list of things? He drives a boat that has a church on it. Apparently there are only  2 of these in the world, and to have something like that on his resume must be pretty cool.

Gold Coast Harbour

After the tour we hung out in the shopping mall next to the dock before getting fish & chips for lunch. Then we were off again to Paradise Country. Paradise Country is a theme park w/ Australian animals and promotes Australian culture. There I got to… hold a koala.

My mom and the koala

Pet a kangaroo.

This is Mr. Hoppy

See sheep getting sheared.

Mr. Sheepy

Also, a horse show and sheep herding.

Dinner was lamb chops.

Then my grandma wanted us to sign up for a glow worm trek. There’s this park called the Springbrook National Park and inside the Natural Bridge (which is a rock formation that looks like a bridge), there’s a colony of glowworms. Several groups take you on a hike through the forest to see these glow worms. Only 300 people are allowed to go a night. There’s a lot of stairs and you’re on a relatively nice hiking trail, but it’s not good for older people with bad knees (ie, my grandma). I think she had a nice time, but I’m not sure if it was worth the AUS$85 to see a bunch of blue dots on a wall for about 8 minutes before hiking back through the forest.

Um, yes, those blue dots are glowworms...