Holiday: Day 6 – Sun, Sea, Sand and… Cents!

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06.00am: G’day Cobbers!! We were up early (again!) – Ann slept well, but I didn’t! 😫

Actually, Monday’s early start was to work in our favour for what we had in mind…

Weather – The Gold Coast & Surfer’s Paradise

Day 6 – Where are we?
(Monday, 4th November)

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07.22am: In keeping with our ‘beat the heat’ plans, our enforced early start meant that we were ‘up and out’ before most people today – it’s been a combination of the heat AND the humidity that’s slowed us down since we arrived and we planned to work around all of that today. It’s our last full day in Brisbane AND Australia for this holiday – and we’re heading for the sun, sea and sand! 👍😁

Those of you that know us well, know that we love surfing*, so we’re grabbing the Train heading for the ‘Mecca’ for surfing dudes – ‘Surfers Paradise‘ on the Gold Coast. We’re taking advantage of Translink’s Go Explore Travel Card which offers a lot of travel for very little money. In our case, just 50c EACH – 25p!!! – for the 60-mile journey (I know, it’s an AMAZING price!) 👍👍

*Oh, it’s THAT kind of surfing – I won’t need a mouse then?! 😲

7.32am: We took the short walk to nearby Roma Street station and within minutes, our first connection arrived. This part of the journey was by train and the second by ‘light railway’ aka the ‘G:Link Tram’ aka ‘The G’. The latter is the newest addition to the travel network for Brisbane, having opened in July 2014.

TODAY’S TRIVIA: Originally called the South Coast, due to its southerly proximity to Brisbane,
the name: Gold Coast evolved due to the inflated prices of land and goods!

Both arrived on time and weren’t too busy, so we easily got seats. Overall, both trains were clean, tidy and quiet, making for a very pleasant travel experience.

Coffee!

9.20am: We arrived in under two hours, having got off at the ‘Surfers Paradise’ stop (not to be confused with ‘Surfers Paradise North’ a few stops earlier!). After a short stroll, we were soon enjoying a coffee at Crema Espresso. We’ve found the coffee to be uniformly excellent since we arrived – giving us a perfect start to our day!

SkyPoint Observation Tower

9.48am: Our next stop was right next door – the SkyPoint Observation Deck. SkyPoint is located 230 metres off the ground at the top of the Q1 building. It costs us 31AUD each to get to the Observation Deck where we were promised unrivalled views. We took the suggestion with a pinch of salt having been to quite a few similar setups around the world.

In pure numbers terms, the Q1 building is 322m tall which makes it taller than the Eiffel Tower (300m) and Burj Al Arab (321m) but not as high as the Empire State Building (443m) or the mighty Burj Khalifa (830m). But it was the views we were here for, more than anything else.

And we weren’t to be disappointed! 👍👍. I’ll just leave these here… 😲

Views across the Gold Coast

As I think you’ll agree, the views are quite something, ehh?!?! Here are some more facts we learned about the Gold Coast area…

😲 The Gold Coast is completely man-made
😲 It has more canals than Venice
😲 It’s the sixth-largest city in Oz
😲 It has the largest film production facility in Australia
😲 It sees just over 12 million visitors per year

Property prices should come as no surprise here – they’re astronomical! We took a quick look in an Estate Agent’s window… How about a cool 1.35m AUD – about £700k – for a two-bedroom apartment? 🤪

The Beach

The Q1 building may have been TALL, but the beach here was long…. very long! 👍

The blueness of the sky was matched by how fine the sand was – it was almost like dust! No photo filters required today! 👍. I think this was the most beautiful beach we’ve EVER seen! 😍😍

10.30am: Time for a sit down and some brunch, courtesy of Alma’s – a Mexican restaurant right on the seafront. We enjoyed a great Brunch, and it was good to be soaking up the Sun, whilst enjoying the cool breeze from the sea.

11.45am: After we’d eaten, we carried on walking for a little longer before heading for the nearest G:Link stop – Cypress Avenue – and we were soon on our way back to the Apartment.

We arrived back at the Apartment in good time. Not only did we need to get packed for our departure tomorrow, but we also had to tackle a new document (for us) to gain entry into New Zealand – the fearful New Zealand Traveller Declaration Form. 😲😲. A cursory glance suggested that this wouldn’t be a quick exercise! 🤪😲🤔

Tomorrow, it’s bye-bye to Australia as we’re back on the plane taking us onward to Auckland, New Zealand.

Nighty-night 💤💤