Beaches on the Weekends: Sunshine and Gold Coasts

 

The Sunshine and Gold Coast beaches are two of the best areas for weekend getaways in all of Queensland and Australia.  Luckily, we are centrally located in Brisbane and have been able to visit both of these places in the past month.

Sunshine Coast (above)

This is Normanby, my UNI gnome I received for Xmas who is making Australia his first adventure with me.  The Sunshine Coast has been his only trip outside the house so far;  otherwise he just chills in my room with this guy who was my souvenir from the Gold Coast.  He’s a genuine Aussie toad.  I would like to believe he helps fend off the gigantic Australian wolf spiders that like to invade my room.

Finding this guy was only part of the highlight of my time at the Gold Coast—which has probably been my favorite destination so far.  For better or worse, the Gold Coast has been transformed into a Cancun-esque type place.  It’s Australia’s fasting growing city with tourism helping establish the city as one of the most prominent in all the country.  While many Australian’s are against the commercialization of their countryside and places like this in order to help maintain the “Outback” image, I felt this city (we were in the Surfer’s Paradise suburb) was built up wonderfully with their unique architectural high-rises and attractions.  While we stayed at the Darcy Arms Irish hotel (we were lucky enough to get the last reservation as we had planned ahead a whole 12-hours worth to get to the Gold Coast), there were plenty of resorts for accommodations right next to the beach.  We were essentially right on the beach as well and close to their major shopping district which was full of tourists, souvenir shops, shopping malls, and places to eat.  We ate at the Hard Rock Café and Vegas in Paradise.  After a month and half here, we finally found out Australians don’t tip at restaurants like these like Americans are used to.  Gotta love the naïve American tourists.

 

The above pics of the lifeguard huts reminded me a bit of the TV show The O.C.  Some of you (Chuck and Kels) will probably understand this lol.  Also, hidden here in the middle of my blog will be my “Shout-out” to my sister who has been bothering me for weeks to say hello and include her within the blog. 

  I took this picture with you in mind.  Don’t expect any “UGG’s” as a souvenir however as they would not fit in my luggage.  Sorry :)

 

Overall, the pictures of the Gold Coast really don’t do the place justice.  It’s a great atmosphere all day long with people eating outside restaurants late into the evening.  Safe to say we did not escape the Sunshine or Gold Coasts without some heartfelt sunburns.  It truly is amazing how intense the sun is;  Australians and my school kids are told to always wear sunscreen.  I’m sure they don’t always listen and and neither have I (not healthy for my skin I know) —but I also don’t live here year-round, otherwise I would probably buy into the trend a little more.  Saying that, we have not spent an entire day at the beach—mostly just for good parts of the afternoon.  I couldn’t imagine being outside all day in that sun without sunscreen.

Regarding the weather during my time here, it has been fabulous.  I have become a bit more accustomed to reading the weather in degree Celsius instead of Fahrenheit.  Essentially, the average temp while we have been here has hovered around 28-30 degrees Celsius, which is low-to-mid 80’s Fahrenheit.  While it has definitely toppled into the 90’s here, it has been a somewhat cool summer for Aussie standards.  Either way, the heat has been bearable, due to our own Midwestern summers and probably because I know back home is enduring the drudgery of February.   Most of the locals say these past few years the weather has been acting really strange.  Usually, it gets absurdly hot and almost like clockwork there would be an afternoon thunderstorm.  While we have been here, there has only been one eye-opening severe storm which unleashed close to half a foot of rain (they use the metric system here, which I had to teach in math one day which was fun lol so I’ve had to get use to millimeters instead of inches) on us in just hours after we had gotten off work at school.  The duration of the downpour was something like I had never seen before and when we finally got home drenched to the bone, we had a river in our backyard draining directly into what was our nice clean pool.  This was crystal clear and after the storm, it was overflowing and full of dirt and debris the flash flood dumped into it. 

All for now!  Some teaching stories and Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo in the next post. Cheers! as they say here.