Gold Coast, Australia

January 1^st – January 4^th 2012

We packed up and said goodbye and Happy New Year to the lovely lady at reception before heading south to the Gold Coast. We ended up getting stuck in traffic in Surfers Paradise and after driving around in search of a parking space gave up and tried to find a place to stay for the night. Because of it still being the festive season campsites were either well over booked or very expensive so we used the sat nav to try and find one away from the main town. The sat nav led us to a place called Lake View Campsite which was in a beautiful setting. We found out from the manager that the site is actually a residential campsite for the over 50’s but as he could see that we had nowhere else to go he offered us a powered site for just $25 per night, where we had previously looked it was $60 per night. It had been a difficult day but we finished it off by having a lovely New Year’s Day picnic by the lake.

Lake Side

 

The next day we asked Wayne the manager if we could stay another night and he said we could based on the fact that we were nice and quiet and not the usual rowdy backpackers! We drove into Surfers Paradise and again had trouble finding a parking space, that’ one disadvantage to having a hi-top campervan as you can’t take advantage of multi storey parking. We decided to give up and head back when we found a cinema on the way home. We stopped and had a look around the shops nearby and went to see War Horse for $8.50 each.

We made sure that we woke up early today in order to get a space in Surfers Paradise as the town was so incredibly busy. We found one and went for a walk along the seafront and around the shops too. Surfers is good if you’re interested in drinking lots and sunbathing but otherwise it doesn’t have a lot going on. When I came here five years ago with family we enjoyed it as we had more money to spend on activities like Ripley’s Believe It Or Not as well as money to eat in nice cafes and restaurants. We went back to the van and drove north to The Spit where we had lunch and went for a walk along the lovely stretch of white sand.

Surfers Paradise

The next day we left Wayne and headed down to Coolangatta. We parked up at the top of a hill where we had lunch with lovely views over the ocean and beach. We could also see the high rises of Surfers in the distance. We walked to nearby Rainbow Bay and down to Coolangatta beach where we passed quite a few wild bush turkeys and lizards. We explored the little town and bought some postcards to send home. We walked back up the hill to the van and drove south through Tweed Heads and across the border into New South Wales. We put our clocks forward an hour and after getting lost eventually found a free rest stop to stay for the night.