Location | Gold Coast, Australia

We started the day at the Mt. Nathan Winery. Yes, I did go wine tasting. Yes, I did turn bright red. Yes, I am a lush. The winery was incredibly small, I wonder where they grow the majority of their grapes, because from what I saw, they could probably make barely 1 bottle of wine. I ended up buying 2 bottles of wine – a 17-year Tawny and an Autumn White w/ Honey. I know nothing about wine, so someone is going to have to come over and drink it with me.

We left the winery and headed to Bond University to check out their campus. It really has a great campus, and apparently is considered one of the top law schools in Australia.

Afterwards we went to the Duty Free Store, which turned out to be such a scam. Essentially tour groups are taken their to earn their tour guides commission. Because most tour groups don’t speak English, they are “at home” at these Duty Free Stores because they are owned by other (in this case) Chinese/Taiwanese people. S-C-A-M.

Across the street we stopped at this park to look at fruit bats. Apparently there was a very large concentration of fruit bats in the area, so I led a pack of our tour over to the trees the fruit bats were hanging from to take some shots. I think we were talking a bit too loudly because they started to wake up. I left quickly, I didn’t want to get hit with any guano.

We went to the Gold Coast beach and walked along the shore for awhile before going to have a nice cup of coffee and to a shopping mall to look at other souvenirs. Then dinner was Chinese and back to the hotel where I anticipate a VERY early morning wake up to catch a flight to Sydney.

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.

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.

Pet a kangaroo.

See sheep getting sheared.

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.