Base Twenty and Twenty-One (Gold Coast)

After the first couple of days we moved to our second home in Gold Coast. It was approximately 50m away from the beach (good) but without a beach view (bad). I want my money back!

Not the bedroom.

We moved into a bedroom of a couple that left for vacation. The guy they left behind was from Argentina and he was the friendliest and most social guy in the whole of the east coast. Although I am not a fan of football (the real one, not one of those played with hands) I admired his childlike enthusiasm for the game and his team. For him, every time his team played it was like a kid unpacking his Christmas presents. So that was fun.

I'll explain the size later.

Still, after that we wanted to have an apartment for ourselves for a while. So we threw a family with two little kids out of their home and settled in. It was the most ungoldcoasty and normal of all the apartments we've been in. I mean look at the neighbourhood.

Thank you Google Street View!

The good thing about it, was that it was big and very quiet (apart from the first day when some people were drilling holes in walls for a couple of hours. The reason the first picture is small and the second one is stolen is that I forgot to take my own pics. The first one is a preview image of the ad on the internet that was still available.

Gold Coast

I was told that there are 600,000 people living at the Gold Coast area except for the summer when it's 2 MILLION BILLION (without the billion). The traffic was barely bearable as it is, I am not sure I want to find out what happens in the summer. I looked up what Wikipedia says and apparently most of the visitors stay for a night or two. We'll see (perhaps).

There was a salsa party a couple of metres from here.

The first impressions were great because the first apartment we got was great. Diana's further impressions were great and I also liked our stay there. It has lots of places to shop and eat. The place is a gigantic beach, canals and adjacent housing. The beaches are great, wide, with smooth sand, clean water and big waves. The weather is good all year long. But something feels strange.

You can find anything in this shopping mall. Anything at all.

I can't put my finger on it but I have the feeling that Gold Coast is not a real city. It seems like a place that pretends to be a city. Half of everything is geared towards the ocean and canal views and experience and the rest is merely a supporting structure for the first half. We didn't find anything missing, there are big shopping malls every couple of hundred metres that have everything you'd want. I still got the feeling that it is not complete. I didn't find a banking district for example. Not that I wanted to find one...

A view to a beach (from the Burleigh place)

Diana and I went for long walks on the beach, visited open air markets with trinkets and food and palm readings (we were only there for the food) and did some yoga. I did it once, she did it every day. The only bigger excursion we did was when we went to the beach and park of Burleigh Head. It was a great walk with nice vistas and the food at the Vietnamese restaurant we ate afterwards was excellent. We also wanted to go to Springbrook but because of scheduling conflicts, we left it for later. Don't ask. I know you won't, anyway.

Base Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen

We are going to be done with those real quick because I started with it and I just can't stop now, can I? These are the homes we stayed while driving to and arriving at Gold Coast. The first one is at Charlestown.

Bedroom

Not bedroom

I tried to surprise Diana with the amount of trees around us but some complications while booking ruined my plans. The place was beautiful if a bit cold. Our host was an older lady that was so nice to us that I got the feeling she wants to keep us as additional children of hers. Next up: Port Macquarie.

Bedroom again

Still a nice one. I think I liked it more than the owner. We only stayed one night there despite the cats. Second to last is Coffs Harbour.

Yes, we get it. Beds!

This one was the first home that had any kind of sound system. They also had the fastest internet I have experienced in Australia. The hosts were a Malaysian couple in our age. They were the people with the most interesting things to tell up until now. The male of the two had racing as a hobby. Finally, our interim solution in Gold Coast for four days before going to our main stay at Paradise Beach.

I like water.

And this is the balcony of the house.

This one was pretty cheap for what was on offer. Even though it was row house in a closed community, it was spectacular. I want to live in a house like that when we are done travelling.

Road to Gold Coast Part 3 - Coffs Harbour

Coffs Harbour doesn't have an apostrophe which always throws me off the loop. The big pull of the town is The Big Banana. Look it up. I don't understand it either. I am not even sure if the Banana really has a big pull. We arrived there off summer season so there weren't many people there anyway. There had all kinds of banana themed souvenirs, also banana shakes, crepes, smoothies, dried bananas, fresh bananas, bananas, bananas, bananas. Diana tried eating honeycomb for the first time in her life. I know, it's totally unrelated but it happened. They also had different rides, a water slide and an ice-skating hall. Diana wanted us to go ice-skating and I resisted at first. When I eventually conceded a couple of hours later, it was closed, although it said in big letters that they are open all day long.

The big thing of the day was our walk on Muttonbird Island.

The view from the island.

It's weird how it is difficult to write about the most beautiful spots. We climbed to the top accompanied by a family and some other people, enjoyed the view but the best thing was when we went on down to the other side, had some alone time and there was nothing going on except from everything being laid out around us, the gras swinging beside our feet and the feel and sound of the wind. It's when nothing happens that everything in the background comes to the forefront of our senses. It was good.

Other than that, Coffs Harbour in true Australian fashion had a street with a row of very nice restaurants that even in a small town rivals what you will find in the whole of Stuttgart that has ten times as many residents. On our first night there, we had a Vietnamese meal. The town also had this.

Guess what!

Stepping through the entry was like stepping through a dimension gate that transported us back to Germany. Everything was identical from the size to the layout, to the placement and type of the offers there.

On our last day at Coffs Harbour we did two earth-shattering things. I went to the electronics store and brought back the blender we bought in Sydney because it was too big to transport. With part of the money I bought Luigi's Mansion 2 which I was looking for for the last couple of months.

Our plan was for our next destination to be Byron Bay but it was extremely difficult to find somewhere to spend the night there for an affordable price. So we just made a stop there. The place was the most vacation-y we have seen in Australia yet but in a nice way. Also, Diana found her new favourite beach.

Diana's new favourite beach.

We came, we saw the beach, we ate a burger, we left.

Road to Gold Coast Part 2 - Port Macquarie

Before we even set out to Port Macquire we got a mail from our host of the future, giving us directions to go to Seal Rocks where we were to find an old kiosk that has great coffee and desserts. Suggestions like these were welcome because we didn't have a real plan ourselves for where to go. Doing a break half-way to our next destination was also a good idea, because this was the longest piece of road we were going to do in a day (I think)?

Best photo 1

When we arrived there, it was indeed a nice place but it didn't seem particularily exciting. Actually it seemed a bit abandonded, forgotten and sad. There were some luxury homes built there where nobody was living because there was no furniture. I liked it in a melancholic kind of way.

Best photo 2

We think we found the kiosk but it didn't seem to have any other coffee than Nescafe in their "kitchen" and no menu or display of desserts apart from a sign advertising pie. We didn't pick anything and didn't sit down which was a bit dissapointing. The upside is that I took the best photos of our way to Gold Coast right there.

Best photo 3

At Port Macquire there were two surprises. The hosts were missing and they left the door unlocked for us. We later found out that they lost their keys to their own home and never bothered replacing the locks or somehow making new ones so the house is always open. Second surprise was that the house had two cats which means Diana freaked out. It was a joyous kind of freaking out.

We went to a pizza place with an unfriendly waiter, then to sleep, then woke up and to the beach close by to take a look.

The Look

After that we took our car to go to the centre of town. When we were in Thailand, we visited a hospital for dogs and cats. In Australia, it was time for a Koala hospital. I parked the car next to a sport centre where it was free because I thought from experience that close to the centre of the town it would cost money to park and rush our visit. Also, parking close to the beach gave us the opportunity to walk on part of the 9km trail that is supposed to be great. I was wrong about the parking thing. The trail was still nice.

Wavy street

So we walked the nice trail, then to some almost deserted streets and THEN WE SAW THE COOLEST THING EVER! A garbage truck stops next to us and then out of the blue a big robot arm comes out, grabs the garbage container, pulls it up, throws the contents in the back of the truck and then sets it back down. Diana wasn't as elated as me, probably because the robot arm wasn't purple or whatever but I am the ultimate decider in all things cool and I say the robot arm rocked. I told her, I wanted to have a robot arm on my car as well, and then when I see pretty women on the street, I let the arm grab them and put them in the back of my car, so that I can decide later which one to take. She laughed. As long as she thinks I am funny, we understand each other.

Koala minding its own business.

The Koala hospital was informative and a bit sad because they treated animals with severe illnesses but they are doing good work there. Diana demonstrated her utter lack of motivation when it comes to thinking and writing when we filled out our entries in the guestbook. There was a column where we are supposed to write our own free-style comment and she just put quotes under my own comment. I almost admire how her mind finds ways to avoid effort she thinks is not warranted.