Weekend in Brisbane

A few weeks after my trip to Byron Bay and Surfer’s Paradise I headed back up to “warm and sunny Queensland” to get away from Melbourne’s gloomy winter. I went with my friend Elena, who was another AIESEC intern in Melbourne, working as a marketing analyst at a software company. She’s from Moldova and we met when we both got here through some AIESEC gatherings. We get along really well and decided back in the fall that we would have a fun weekend away in Brisbane when we got sick of the winter in Melbourne. We had it planned for the weekend of August 21^st to 23^rd but right before we were supposed to go Elena had a lot of troubles with her work place and ended up having to quit and move to Adelaide with her boyfriend. I was worried we were going to have to cancel the trip, but luckily she was able to change her flights to leave from Adelaide and meet me in Brisbane instead of flying there with me from Melbourne.

I took a day off on the Friday so we could have a long weekend up there. I had worked late throughout the week so that I was able to leave work early on Thursday for my flight at 6. I was at the airport by about 3:30 pm and sat there writing postcards and letters. The flight was supposed to leave at 6 pm but was delayed by an hour so we didn’t take off until 7. That was pretty normal for TigerAir since they are a budget airline that is often running late, but once we were in the air I quickly realized this flight was not going to be “smooth sailing”. We had been in the air for about 20 minutes when they made an announcement asking if there were any medical personnel on the plane, and if they could come up to the front. That is of course never a good thing to hear while in the air, but luckily there was a woman who stood up and went to the front. I could see that they had laid someone down at the front and there was a group of people standing around with the curtains closed. We had no idea what was going on but I was hoping for the best. The flight to Brisbane is only about an hour and a half long and we had already been in the air for an hour when they made an announcement saying we had to turn around and go back to Melbourne to get the person to a hospital. That seemed weird since I knew we were closer to Brisbane but I didn’t question it. Once we landed back in Melbourne we waited on the plane for about 30 minutes until emergency personnel showed up to take the person off the plane, then we de-planed about 30 minutes after that. We then had to wait in the TigerAir terminal, which is a temporary metal hangar with no heat and no food places open for another hour and a half until we could get on another plane. I was really hungry because I was meant to be in Brisbane by 7:30 and it was already 10:30. We still didn’t know what was going on either…they hadn’t said much or when the next plane would be. We finally got on the new plane at 12:00 am and made it to Brisbane by 1:30 am. I was supposed to be in Brisbane a few hours earlier than Elena, but instead she had been there waiting for me since 11:00! Once I got there I met up with her and she told me that the people waiting had all been told that the man on our plane had actually died of a heart attack while in the air, which was why we had to return to Melbourne since it’s their policy to bring the body back to where they started. I was so shaken up by that because I had tried to hope for the best the whole time, and the flight attendants had done such a good job of staying calm, which kept everyone else on the plane calm that we just had no idea that had happened! The trains into the city weren’t running at this point so we had to take a taxi into the city and we didn’t get into our room at the hostel until about 3 am. I was exhausted and sad about the whole thing….it was such a weird thing to happen on a plane I was on and it took me a bit to fall asleep with all of the tragic thoughts hanging around in my head.

The next morning we slept in a little and then walked into the city which took about 15 minutes from our hostel. Brisbane is known for having beautiful sunny and warm weather all year round, so it was such a bummer to wake up to pouring rain! We rugged up though and had our umbrellas close by, since we weren’t going to waste our time sitting in the hostel. Our first stop was the beautiful town hall, where we met an old friend of Elena’s. When Elena was 12 years old, a woman named Kim who worked for Lonely Planet came and stayed with her family in Moldova for some time while she travelled around Moldova and wrote about it. Elena’s family showed her all of the Moldovan sites and taught her some of their language and culture. She had stayed with the family for a while and Elena hadn’t seen her since. Kim is Australian and is now living near Brisbane, so she took the train into Brisbane to meet up with Elena. It was a really heart-warming moment when they saw each other because it had been 12 years since they’d last seen each other and they had been very close. I felt a little bad intruding on their reunion, but they insisted the more the merrier! The three of us walked to Queen Street Mall, a pedestrian shopping street with some cute cafes to grab a coffee. It was so fascinating talking with Kim because she really had the coolest job in the world for so many years! Once she turned 40 she stopped working for Lonely Planet so she could settle down. But before that, she had literally travelled all over the world to discover countries and cities and write about them, telling tourists about the must-do’s and see’s and what they absolutely had to avoid. She had amazing stories from Africa, South America, Europe and everywhere in between! After we had finished our coffees, Kim’s cousin and his wife came to join us so we could all have lunch together. They live in France but were travelling in Australia and were in Brisbane the same weekend we were. The 5 of us walked across the Brisbane River and along Southbank to find a spot to eat lunch. Southbank is a beautiful walkway all along the south side of the river. There are ferry quays all along where the city ferries and tour boats stop to pick people up so there were tons of people waiting at those as well as people like us wandering along the river. Part of the walkway has a metal arch over it with the most stunning purple flowers entwined all throughout the arch so it feels like you’re walking in a gorgeous flower tunnel! 

The flower tunnel along Southbank. I can only imagine what it will look like in the summer!

We stopped at a great restaurant and got several delicious dishes to share. We also shared a bottle of wine, and when you have a glass of wine on a Friday you really know you’re on holiday so I was a happy gal. Once lunch was finished we said goodbye to the group and Elena and I hopped on a CityHopper, which is a free ferry that takes you all along the river, stopping at many places along the way. We had wanted to do something outside, but it was pouring rain and quite miserable so we sat in the boat and got to see some of the city while still staying dry. We went past Kangaroo Point, which is and under Story Bridge, Brisbane’s most famous bridge. Seeing the city from the river was a nice vantage point and a good way to get a feel for Brisbane on our first day there. We got off the ferry at Eagle Street Pier, a high-end restaurant and shopping district. Since neither of us are nearly rich enough to spend any time there, we scurried out of that area as fast as we could. We walked through the city for a while, stopping for a coffee before heading back to our hostel. Even though we hadn’t done much all day, we were pretty tired since we didn’t get to bed until 3:30 the night before. So we went to our hostel, showered and got ready to meet some people for dinner.

Story Bridge as seen though the rain streaked windows on the ferry 

My roommate Kevin has a friend from home named Kate who lived in Brisbane for a year as an au-pair. Kate was still in Australia until the beginning of August and had come to Melbourne a few times so I had gotten to know her fairly well. Unfortunately she was already back home in Wisconsin when we were in Brisbane, but she had some friends there that she put me in contact with. She was friends with an American couple, named Andrea and Kevin, and she told them we were coming for the weekend so they contacted me to see if we wanted to meet for dinner on Friday night. We planned to meet in West End, a trendy and “hipster” area of Brisbane. There were night markets there on Friday nights, with tons of International food stalls where you could get delicious multicultural food. It took Elena and I about 30 minutes to walk there, and it had continued raining the whole way so we were cold and ready for food by the time we got there! We met Andrea and Kevin at the entrance to the markets. The night markets are in an old parking lot, with many food stalls so we wandered along until we all found something we wanted to eat then we congregated under a roof to eat it, protected from the rain. Andrea and Kevin then took us to a cool bar along the same street. There were book shelves full of books and cool posters all over the walls…definitely a hipster bar. It was great chatting with the two of them because they were kind of in the same boat as us. They were American and had moved to Australia around the same time I had, in January, although they had 3 year visas so will be here for a lot longer than I will. They both have their PhDs in engineering and are working at the university in Brisbane. My friend from Melbourne, James happened to also be in Brisbane for the weekend. He has his own fishing lure business called Balista and he had been on the road for the last few weeks doing sales and fishing. He had driven up the east coast from Melbourne and was coincidentally in Brisbane the same weekend we were there. We had figured that out the week before so he booked himself into the same hostel as Elena and I for the Friday and Saturday night. James came and met us at the bar and the 4 of us then moved on to another cool bar that Andrea and Kevin like. It’s always fun to go out with people who have been living there for a while because they can bring you to the local favourites, which often aren’t the “tourist” bars you read about in the guide books. We went to a few really awesome places that night and the 5 of us had a great night out in the city.

One of the funky rooftop bars we went to

The next morning, Elena, James and I all crammed into James’ car and went into the city for breakfast. After breakfast, James dropped Elena and I off at City Hall and he went off to visit his distributors in Brisbane and work for the day. Elena and I went into City Hall and headed up to the Clock Tower. Kate had told me that you can go up the clock tower for free and you get an awesome view of the city from up there. The clock tower is 70m tall and the design was based on St. Mark’s Campenile in Venice, so it’s quite beautiful. To get to the top you have to take a really old elevator-it’s the service elevator that has been used for years to wind the clock and do maintenance on it. Because it’s old and ancient, it needs to be driven by someone; you can’t just push a button to get to the top like with the elevators now a day. This meant that they only have one group up there at a time and they only have tours every hour. Elena and I had to wait 45 minutes until the next one, but we didn’t mind because they have a really cool museum where you wait for the tour, so we spent the next 40 minutes there. There were different sections of the museum and they were all really interesting. One of the sections talked about the history of the Brisbane River and all of its uses which was pretty fascinating. The part that I really liked explored Moreton Bay and all of the islands in in. Moreton Bay is the bay just off the coast of Brisbane that the Brisbane River flows into. It has more than 365 sand islands. The reason I found this so interesting is because Earthwatch has just developed a new expedition since I’ve been here and it looks at the health of Moreton Bay. It’s called “Snorkel for Queensland’s Marine Mammals” and it looks at the effects of metropolitan Brisbane on the bay including the pollution flowing into the bay from the city, the freight traffic due to the city’s port and the tourism around the bay since all of the islands are popular vacation destinations. The teams will be snorkelling and boating to collect seagrass samples, as well as map the extent and condition of the seagrass. They’ll also take sediment samples from the boat and will wade in intertidal rock pools and mudflats to collect small fishes and marine creatures living there. There are 4 expeditions a year and 2 of them will be based on Moreton Island and 2 on North Stradbroke Island, so the researchers can have sites at different locations in the bay. I’ll be going as a team leader on the team in January which will be on North Stradbroke Island, so it was pretty cool to read about the island and the bay since I’ve done so much work to get this project up and running. All of the islands have such cool history-some of them were penal colonies, one of them was a quarantine island, so the people who were very sick got sent there so as not to infect the rest of the city, and the others were used for different, equally interesting purposes.

City Hall with the beautiful clock tower 

Once the 45 minutes were up, Elena and I went to join a small group to go up the clock tower. Our tour guide (the glorified elevator driver) told us the history of the City Hall and the Clock Tower and took us to the small walk way around the top of the clock tower where you could see all of Brisbane with the meandering river flowing through it. It’s quite a beautiful city, and is set up similarly to Melbourne with the river flowing through the centre. Unfortunately it was another rainy day, so we couldn’t see as far as you normally would be able to but it still gave us a good sense of the layout of the city. On the way back down to the museum, the tour guide stopped the elevator at the level where we were in line with the ancient clock face which was really awesome to see close up! It’s the largest clock face in Australia so it was cool to be right behind it and get a sense of how big it really is. 

The ancient elevator that took us up to the clock tower.

After the tour, Elena and I walked down Queen Street Mall toward the river, stopping for some fresh fruit and yogurt along the way. We crossed the river and went to the Queensland Museum, on the south side of the river. We were pretty disappointed with the weather since they almost always have beautiful warm and sunny weather in Brisbane year-round. It’s known for that, and everyone in Melbourne was telling me how great it would be there since Melbourne had been so gloomy and rainy all winter. We had a massive stroke of bad luck though because it rained basically the whole weekend we were there, and people in Melbourne were texting me telling me it was plus 20 and sunny there! Such a slap in the face! It meant that Elena and I couldn’t do a lot of the fun outdoor things people do in Brisbane, so we went to the museum instead.  The Queensland Museum was free for us to get into and is a really cool natural history museum! It had a section on dinosaurs that used to live in this area as well as many other cool Australian animals. It was a really nice afternoon wandering through the museum and the gloominess of the day wore off. 

Elena about to be stepped on my a dino!

After the museum we stopped for a coffee to rest our legs then headed along Queen Street Mall to do some shopping. We didn’t buy much but a girls weekend isn’t complete without at least a bit of shopping! We then stopped at a grocery store on our way back to the hostel and picked up some munchies so we could have a picnic back at the hostel with James and his friend. James knew a guy in Brisbane who fished with his lures and sent pictures in, helping him to promote his business so the 2 of them met up that day. His friend’s name is Jesse, and the 4 of us sat on the deck outside our room in the hostel and ate a delicious dinner. We had crackers, dips, cheese, veggies and fruit, complete with a glass of wine. The hostel was high up on a hill so we could see down into the city from our second story patio. It was a lovely Saturday evening. The 4 of us then walked about 45 minutes to get to Fortitude Valley, a suburb in Brisbane known for its club scene. We’d heard lots about it and weren’t in the clubbing mood, but wanted to see it anyway. There were the longest lines outside of the clubs, and if we hadn’t already been uninterested in clubbing, that would have really turned us off from it. We walked a little further and found a much more relaxed bar that we stopped to get a drink at before heading back to the hostel.

The nice balcony outside of our hostel room where we had a picnic feast on Saturday night.

The next morning, Elena and I slept in again then walked into town to South Bank where we met up with Andrea. We were planning to go to Kangaroo Point which is another suburb of Brisbane, on the south side of the river atop of stunning cliffs. I had been told it has amazing views of the river and city, as well as the iconic Story Bridge. Kate told me that they have a great restaurant there called the Edge which sits on the edge of the cliff (as you would have guessed) and you can look over the river and city while you eat. It was our first nice day there, so we decided to walk there along the river instead of taking the ferry which took us about 30 minutes. It was a beautiful walk because we got to walk all along South Bank with its beautiful gardens, cafes and restaurants. It even has a man-made beach and swimming pool where people flock to during hot summer days since the river is too dirty to swim in. Once we got past the South Bank area we were walking right beside massive cliffs. When we made it all the way to Kangaroo Point we had to go up some steep stairs to get up the cliff and the restaurant was right there! As promised, we had the most incredible views from up there while we enjoyed delicious food and coffee and great company…it was a lovely start to our last day there!

The wheel of Brisbane located along southbank

A taste of some of the beautiful flower gardens along the southbank walk

The stairs up to The Edge at Kangaroo Point 

The view of the river and city from the restaurant.

After lunch the 3 of us walked back toward South Bank but we walked up on the cliffs instead of along the water, giving us beautiful river and city views the whole way. When we got to South Bank we stopped at the South Bank markets, which are local craft and art markets set up along South Bank every weekend. There were some amazing things on display and for sale there, but unfortunately we couldn’t buy anything because our flight back was that night and we couldn’t fit anything else in our carry-on bags. We then went to check out the man made beaches along South Bank..such a weird but cool thing! We didn’t have too many other plans for the day, because we had seen and done most of the things on our list already. So when Andrea invited Elena and I over to her and Kevin’s apartment for an afternoon glass of wine we happily accepted. They live in West End which is the funky suburb where we had gone out with them on Friday night. Kevin was at home working but he took a break when we got there and the 4 of us sat on their balcony and enjoyed the sunshine and a glass of wine. They had been so nice to us the entire time we were there, taking us out places and giving suggestions on what we should see and do. They’re planning on coming down to Victoria at some point before I leave so I hope I can reciprocate that hospitality then!

The beach on the side of the Brisbane River.

After Elena and I left their apartment we walked back into the city and stopped for an ice cream at the Copenhagen Ice Creamery...Elena’s favourite ice cream shop from when she was living in Adelaide. We walked to the Roma Street Parklands where we found a nice patch of grass and ate our ice cream. The gardens are so beautiful and they had an exhibit on called Parks Alive where there were activities set up all throughout the gardens to get more people to spend time in them. 

Elena enjoying her ice cream in the gardens

The Roma Street Parklands with a kangaroo-shaped shrub!

After we had wandered through the gardens for a while we headed back to the hostel, packed up our things and hung out with James and Jesse who had just gotten back from a day of fishing. We then took the train to the airport and flew back to Melbourne on a much more relaxed and calm flight than on the way to Brisbane. We got back to Melbourne very late so were exhausted but it was a great trip, despite the rainy weather! Elena moved back to Adelaide the week after because her internship in Melbourne was finished, so it was nice that we got to spend a weekend together before she left.

Girls Weekend along the Gold Coast-Byron Bay and Surfers Paradise

At the end of July I was sitting with my new French friend Zoe on a rooftop bar in Melbourne on a Sunday night and we were discussing travel (as you do with other foreigners also living in Australia). She was telling me that her and her friend she met in Sydney were planning a weekend trip to Byron Bay, along the east coast of Australia at the beginning of August. It was only a few weeks away, but she invited me and spontaneously I said yes! I had only met Zoe a week before through another friend and had never met her friend Marion, but I had been dying to go up to the Gold Coast (the stretch of stunning white sand beaches along the east coast, north of Sydney) for ages and thought why not? I still had a day of time in lieu left to take from the expedition in June so the next day at work I booked Friday August 8^th off and we booked our flights!

I flew into Coolangatta Airport along the Gold Coast early the morning of August 8^th and waited for Marion for a few hours in the airport. She was flying in from Sydney, and was due to arrive later than me. Marion and Zoe are both from France and had been au pairs in Sydney for several months which is how they met. Zoe moved to Melbourne in June and met one of my friends, who then introduced us. We got along really well, so it worked out perfectly that her and Marion planned this trip up to the coast because it meant I had some travel buddies! Once Marion and I found each other at the airport, we got a free shuttle into the city to our car rental place, picked up our car and drove 45 minutes to get to Byron Bay. Zoe had flown in to Byron Bay the previous day and was waiting for us there. Byron Bay is a beautiful coastal town in New South Wales (close to the border of Queensland), about 9 hours north of Sydney. It is the kind of town you think of when you picture Australia…barefoot ”surfer dudes” walking around town with long flowing hair and no shirts, a beautiful white sandy beach, cool restaurants and bars all along the main strip and the most incredible sunsets and sunrises over the ocean. It’s quite touristy in the summer and offers surfing lessons, paddle boarding, kayak tours and whale watching tours. We went during the winter however, so although there was still a bit of a bustle to the town, it was not over-run with tourists and still had quite a relaxed feel to it. Once we got to Byron, we met up with Zoe at our hostel, dropped our stuff off in our room and headed straight to the beach! We picked up take-away lunch on the way and sat on the beautiful beach while we ate it. As I said, it was the middle of winter and we had been living in Melbourne and Sydney, which do not exactly have “beach weather” that time of the year, so it was quite exciting for us to be there. We were all very giddy and content, since it really hit us then that we were on vacation. 

Byron Bay beach...where we ate our first meal of the vacation

Marion had been to Byron Bay several months before but she had gone with her host family for one of their friend’s weddings, and she was there to look after the kids. This meant that she had seen a bit of the town but had not had a lot of free time, so she had a list of things she wanted to do. That suited Zoe and I fine because we let her do the planning for what we would do and see there since she had a much better sense of the town than we did. The main to-dos on her list were to see the sun set and rise from the Cape Byron lighthouse. The Cape Byron lighthouse is an active lighthouse on a point, about 3 km northeast of the town of Byron Bay. The cape is the eastern most point of the mainland of Australia, so was obviously somewhere we had to go! There is a nice walking trail along the beach to get there from the town, but it was already 5 pm and we only had 30 min before the sun was due to set, so we decided to take the faster route up to the lighthouse which was along the road, a little further from the water. We had lost track of time while enjoying our lunch on the beach, and had to really book it since we wanted to see the sunset from the cape. We realized we weren’t going to make it however, and we didn’t want to miss the amazing colours while we were on the road, so we cut in toward the ocean and decided to watch it from a point a few kilometres away from the lighthouse. It was a stunning sunset! There were clouds in the sky, which meant the rays of sun and colour of the sky was just beautiful! We stayed and watched it for a long time, unable to pull ourselves away because of the constantly changing sky. 

The sunset over Byron Bay

Once it was dark, we headed back down to the town along the beach and went to our hostel to get ready for a night out. Byron Bay has two main “backpackers” and young bars. One is a club called The Cheeky Monkey that’s good for dancing, and the other is called Railway Friendly Bar which is more chill and has an awesome beer garden outside with live music on the weekend. Because Byron Bay is so small, those 2 bars are in all of the guide books and are recommended by everyone who had been there before, so we had to check them out. First we went to the Railway Friendly Bar and sat outside, drinking our beer and cider and listening to an awesome folk band. It was a lot of fun and was really bumping! There were so many people there already and it was only 8 pm. We knew that had to be a good sign for the rest of the night! We then went to The Cheeky Monkey just to get a stamp so that we wouldn’t have to pay later on when we wanted to go dancing there. They had cheap drinks until 9 pm however, so we went inside for 3 dollar cocktails (which is unheard of in Australia!). We then headed back to the hostel since The Cheeky Monkey wouldn’t get busy for another hour or so, so we sat at a long table in our hostel courtyard and had some drinks with some of the other backpackers. It’s always fun to sit and hang with other travellers because you meet such interesting people from all over the world and have the most fascinating conversations! A little later, we all headed back to The Cheeky Monkey and had a great night dancing and singing our hearts out. It was so nice to have a fun night out with some girlfriends since it had been cold and miserable in Melbourne for the past few months and people didn’t tend to go out much so it had been a while since I had done that.

The next morning, we were up at an un-godly hour…5:00 am!! We rolled out of bed, hopped in the car and drove up to the Byron Bay lighthouse so we could watch the sun rise from there. It’s a really popular thing to do while visiting Byron Bay, so there were tons of people there by 5:30 already! The Byron Bay lighthouse is a working lighthouse and is the most powerful lighthouse in Australia. It’s on Cape Byron, so it has 360 degree views of the ocean and beaches in every direction which is what makes it perfect for watching the sunrise. We were there for an hour and it was the most peaceful and beautiful morning I’d had in ages! The sunrise was stunning, with constantly changing colours. I even saw a fin of some type of whale or dolphin pop briefly out of the water while I watched the night turn into day. Once the sun was completely up, we drove down to the beach and did the rest of the coastal lighthouse walk that we hadn’t been able to do the night before. It was a stunning walk, with dramatic cliffs, crashing waves and beautiful sunshine. We went all the way back up the lighthouse then back down again and once we got to our car we drove back to the hostel. We ate breakfast, packed up our things and checked out.

What a way to wake up! 

Cape Byron lighthouse 

The dramatic cliffs along the coastal walk from Byron Bay beach to the lighthouse 

We were driving to Surfers Paradise, where we were staying that night, as it’s only a few hours north of Byron Bay along the Gold Coast. We decided not to go straight there, but to take some detours through several national parks to do some rainforest hiking. There are several national parks in the Gold Coast hinterlands, and they are part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area. The drive from Byron Bay to the first park we went to, Springbrook National Park is absolutely stunning, because there are mountains covered in lush rainforests, ancient trees and spectacular waterfalls every way you look. Our first stop was in Springbrook National Park, where we did a short circuit hike to get to Natural Bridge. Natural Bridge is a waterfall that falls through a hole into a cavern below. You can see it from both the cavern below and the waterfall above. It was once a normal waterfall falling over a cliff, but over time the water eroded away at the basalt cliff and broke through, falling into the undercut cavern below. The rest of the cliff remained, forming a natural bridge, or arch. The colour of the water is spectacular-it’s so green, it doesn’t seem like it can be natural. Apparently it’s filled with glow worms and is an amazing thing to see at night, but we didn’t have the time to stick around that long unfortunately.

Natural Bridge 

After that walk, we continued driving up the mountains to get to Lamington National Park. The Lamington and Springbrook plateaus and cliffs are the northern and western remnants of the huge shield volcano called the Tweed Volcano, which dominated this region 23 million years ago. It is filled with craters and peaked ridges and mountains, now covered in rainforests. From high up in Lamington National Park, you can see across Numbinbah Valley to the ocean, with the high rise buildings of Surfers Paradise on the coast. It’s a really spectacular sight to see the towering skyline behind all of the natural beauty. We did several hikes in the rainforest, with some incredible lookouts. It was so nice to spend the majority of our day in the rainforest, with colourful (and loud) birds and some of the most ancient trees in the world.

At a lookout in Lamington National Park overlooking one of the biggest peaks in Numinbah Valley 

The rainforest hike in Lamington National Park-very different vegetation than what I'm used to when hiking at home!

After we finished hiking, we drove back down to the coast and up to Surfers Paradise. Surfers Paradise is the Gold Coast’s entertainment and tourism district, with high rise buildings along the beach, casinos, expensive restaurants and hotels and night clubs galore! It’s kind of like the Las Vegas of Australia, where all of the backpackers flock to for surfing and partying…the stereotypical image of Australia that a lot of travellers have. When we got there, we checked in at our hostel then made our way straight to the beach! It was evening at this point, so was too cool to swim, but we walked along the stunning white sand beach, which was kilometres and kilometres long and watched the sunset. We then walked along the main stretch in the city, a pedestrian-only street called Cavill Mall. This is where most of the restaurants, shops, clubs and bars are. Surfers Paradise is not what I would call a “nice” city…it’s extremely touristy and tacky. The kind of place where you see pink stretch hummers flying down the street with music pumping out of their stereos and party animals hanging out their windows...we definitely saw our fair share of them. But it’s the gateway to the amazing Gold Coast beaches, and is a place everyone should see at least once, so we couldn’t miss it. After we had explored the city a little, we stopped at the Hard Rock Café for their happy hour, and the 3 of us sat out on the balcony with a bucket of Heinekens (don’t worry, it was a small bucket). We watched the hustle and bustle of the city, as the day became night and the city began to come alive! We headed back to our hostel for the 2 dollar barbecue we had been promised earlier…and it did not disappoint! We got 2 snags (the Australian word for sausages), BBQed onions and salad all for 2 dollars and we were beginning to see why backpackers love this place. Our hostel was going on a club-crawl that night, since that’s what people do in Surfers, but it was too expensive and crazy for us so we met up with a woman we had met the previous night in Byron Bay and went to a more relaxed Irish pub in town for some drinks. It was a great pub with live music and tons of fun people. We even met a guy in a kangaroo suit on the dance floor….in case we had forgotten what country we were in.

The iconic Surfers Paradise Arch 

Surfers Paradise Beach with some ominous looking clouds.

The ladies kicking back with a bucket of Heinekens after a long but awesome day of walking and exploring.

The next morning we woke up pretty early, ate the free (and extremely limited) breakfast the hostel provided then hopped in the car to do some beach hopping! The Gold Coast is an area that stretches from Coolangatta, right on the border of New South Wales up to Beenleigh, less than 30 minutes South of Brisbane. The whole coast is 56 kilmotres long, and is one of the best surfing coasts in Australia, with the most amazing beaches all the way along. We weren’t flying back to Melbourne until 9 pm that night, so we decided to use that day to check out all of these famous beaches along the Gold Coast. The first beach that we stopped at was Miami Beach….which was obviously quite exciting and meant we had to take a lot of pictures of the Miami signs. It was a beautiful white sand beach that stretched for miles! It wasn’t a surfing beach but was great for swimming and sun tanning.

Miami Beach with the Surfers Paradise skyline in the background.

The classic "vacation memento" in the sand-no trip to the beach is complete without it.

Enjoying the famous Queensland sunshine!

Throughout the day we drove along the coast and stopped at several more stunning beaches including Burleigh Heads beach (which is one of the best surfing beaches in Australia) and Kirra beach. We ended at the border between Coolangatta (in Queensland) and Tweeds Head (in New South Wales). The reason we wanted to go there was because it’s the border between the 2 states and they have a monument there with a line running through the middle so you get to stand with one foot in QLD and the other foot in NSW. When we first pulled up to the parking lot at the lookout above Coolangatta beach we saw a huge crowd of people standing at the railing and pointing towards the water. I grabbed my camera and ran as fast as I could to the railing and was far from disappointed! There, not far from the beach, were 2 humpback whales swimming around!!! I had heard that we might see humpback whales somewhere along there because they migrate along that coast during the winter. I was hoping it would happen but tried not to get my hopes up because I figured it was unlikely and we weren’t going to pay for a whale-watching tour. So needless to say I was feeling extremely lucky and excited! We watched the whales for about 20 minutes! They just hung around close to shore for a long time before heading further out to sea. They flipped their tails and flippers for us and spouted water….it was incredible!!! Best part of the trip for sure!

Burleigh Heads-one of Australia's National Surfing Reserves. This is looking back to the way we came with Surfers Paradise and Miami Beach in the background.

The two humpback whales we saw! One of them was doing a cheeky wave towards the crowd.

After watching the whales for a while, we went to check out the monument between the two states and got to stand with our feet on the different sides of the states which was pretty cool. We then got sushi and ate it at a picnic table by the beach. It was so cool because we had driven a while down the beach, but it curves around so from where we were sitting we could see the high rises of Surfers Paradise in the distance with miles and miles of beach in between. It was a pretty amazing sight!

Standing with one foot in New South Wales and the other in Queensland!

Not a bad place for a lunch break...

We then drove back to Surfers Paradise, checked out of our hostel and walked into the city centre to see the sunset. It was on the other side of the city from the beach, but because there are rivers all throughout the city we still got to watch it set over the water which was really nice. We then wandered past a pub that was serving a free BBQ so we had sausages, fried onions and salad for the second night in the row, but it was free so we couldn’t pass it up. After dinner we went to the beach where there was a stunning super moon! Seeing the super moon’s reflection on the calm ocean was really cool. They had night markets along the esplanade where people were selling literally everything under the sun (or moon in this case)! There was some really good food and beautiful homemade crafts and art work but there were also some tacky and hideous touristy knick-knacks as well. Zoe and I then had to say goodbye to Marion and dropped her off at the hostel because she was staying for another day then we drove to the airport and flew home. The flight was delayed so I didn’t get home until after 1 am then had to go to work the next morning. So needless to say I was pretty exhausted. We pushed ourselves pretty hard over the weekend but saw so many amazing things and did tons! They were great girls to travel with because we were all on the same page for everything and wanted to see and do as much as we could but it was still so relaxing and refreshing! Overall, a really fantastic weekend!

The last sunset of the weekend over a river in Surfers Paradise

The super moon over Surfers Paradise Beach-look how bright it was!

Devon's Visit-The Grampians and The Great Ocean Road

At the end of June, I was able to welcome my first visitor from Canada to my Australian home! My friend Devon, who was a girl that I went to University with came to Melbourne on June 25^th. She had been travelling in New Zealand for 6 weeks before that and was ending off her Southern Hemisphere trip with 2 weeks in Australia, the first of which she spent with me! I hadn’t seen Devon since school ended last April, so I was beyond excited for her to come…it made for a long work week since I couldn’t wait! Her flight arrived in Melbourne Wednesday evening and she got to my apartment around 9. Originally I was planning on meeting her for dinner in the city somewhere to celebrate her arrival and us being reunited, but I had come down with a terrible cold a few days before and was so sick that I really couldn’t make it back out of the house to meet her. So instead of a nice celebratory dinner we drank Cup-O-Soups since I was too sick to make an actual meal. It didn’t matter though since we had so much to talk about and catch-up on… we would have been happy eating anything!

The next day I had to go to work which was quite a struggle since I was not at all well! But I was taking the Friday and Monday off so Devon and I could go on a trip and I really couldn’t take a sick day then take 2 days off for fun…wouldn’t have looked very good so I stuck it out at work (probably annoying everyone with my constant sniffling and coughing). I had made a long list of things Devon should see and do while in Melbourne so she set off in the morning to hit the sights! She came and met me at lunch and we grabbed curries from a local restaurant and sat and ate them in the Royal Botanic Garden which was lovely. After work, I met her at home and the two of us and my roommate Kevin walked to a popular Melbourne Pho place that I had been wanting to try for months. The warm soup broth and spicy flavours made me feel heaps better! I’ve decided it’s my new favourite “sick meal”. After dinner, I took Devon to another Melbourne institution….Messina, the most delicious Gelato place I’ve ever been to! (Outside of Italy of course).

I took the next day off of work as well as the Monday since I still had some days in lieu from the expedition I went on in June. So I had a 4-day weekend while Devon was here which meant we could go on an awesome weekend trip! Friday morning we woke up early and walked to a car rental agency in the city. We were heading up to the Grampians for the weekend, which is a national park with amazing mountains, hiking trails and views. There is no public transportation that goes up there however, so we had to rent a car. We were both pretty nervous as it was our first time driving on the left side of the road. The cheapest rental agency was right downtown Melbourne as well so we not only had to drive on the wrong side of the road, but had to do it in rush hour morning traffic downtown Melbourne! Saying the experience was terrifying is an understatement! Devon drove at the beginning since we wanted to get to a quiet suburb to practice a little and she needed me to direct her there. She did a great job and we made it out of the city and to some residential streets. We both took turns driving around there, then once I felt comfortable enough, I drove us through the city and onto the freeway! I had never really driven on a big city freeway before and here I was merging onto an 8-lane freeway on the left-side of the road! It was an insanely busy freeway so was quite stressful but with enough concentration and finger-crossing I made it and we were safely on our way out of the city. The further away we got from the city and the longer I drove the more comfortable I became. It was really quite a fun and exciting experience and it made me realize how much I’ve missed driving since being here! We drove for a few hours, stopping at a grocery store to grab food for the weekend and for a necessary coffee break, and we made it to our hostel in Halls Gap early evening.

Halls Gap is a small town right beside Grampians National Park, and is often the base where people stay when hiking around the Grampians. We had booked ourselves into a cute little hostel there. It was a wooden building and had a nice kitchen and dining room, a cosy lounge room with a fireplace and board games and a TV room where you could watch movies. It was already dark by the time we settled in so we decided not to do a hike that evening. We walked 15 minutes down the road to get to the centre of town (just one main street with a few shops and a petrol station) and headed to the grocery store to pick up a bottle of wine to have with dinner. We cooked ourselves a stir fry for dinner in the hostel kitchen and chatted with some of the fellow hikers and climbers in the hostel. That night it started pouring which turned out to be the theme of the entire weekend, so we stayed in the hostel and borrowed one of the hundreds of DVDs they had there. It was a relaxing and nice evening in, and we went to bed early so we could get up and have a full day of exploring and hiking the following day.

Devon preparing our stir-fry very menacingly!

When we woke up the next morning however it was pouring rain! We decided that we had come to the Grampians to hike, so nothing was going to stop us! We set out and drove to a trail head, where we did a lovely circuit loop that took us along a river and to some pretty rock pools. The area is very hilly with beautiful cliffs everywhere so we walked with the river on one side of the trail and magnificent cliffs on the other side. The other cool thing about the Grampians is that there are wild grey kangaroos and swamp wallabies everywhere!! We literally saw hundreds of them! They would be in mobs in fields, scattered throughout the hills and on the hiking trails. I had seen lots of  kangaroos before but never so many in one area. And they were Devon’s first kangaroos and wallabies which was extremely exciting! 

Devon's first close-up kanga! 

A mob of kangaroos...like deer in the headlights!

It was a miserably rainy day though, and after several hours of hiking we were both completely drenched and freezing cold (keep in mind it was winter which can get chilly here still). So we headed back to the hostel for lunch and a warm up….and subsequently got stuck in front of the warm fireplace for far too long. Once we were warm enough to peel ourselves away from the flames, we stepped back outside to brave the rainy conditions once more. We drove around and did some short hikes to a few waterfalls and one that went straight up a mountain but there was no view at all once we got up there (and there should have been stunning vistas and mountains surrounding us from the picures we had seen) so we decided it wasn’t worth doing any more of those. There was one hike we were dying to do that was called The Pinnacle. It’s one of the famous hikes around there because you climb for hours to get really high on one of the mountains and are out on a pinnacle (as you would have guessed) to get incredible 360 degree views of the whole area. We knew there was no point doing it that day because of the fog, so thought we would save it for the next morning. When we got too wet to stand it anymore we went to the cultural visitor centre that talked all about the Indigenous history and people of that area which was really fascinating. We ended the day with a nice hostel-made chilli and a movie in the warm and cozy lounge room. 

There should have been an incredible view from this lookout but as you can see-nothing!

Look at that fog! 

The next morning we got up early so we could go do the Pinnacle hike we had been waiting to do all weekend. But alas, it was just as foggy as the previous day! We drove up to a lookout and couldn’t even see our hands in front of us…there was zero visibility so we thought we might as well leave the area and try to find some sunshine along the Great Ocean Road. We had a good time in the Grampians but it was a shame that the weather had been so uncooperative. We felt like we didn’t really get to see the Grampians at all so I decided I will just have to go back before my time here is up. We left the Grampians and drove south towards the coast. We went along some beautiful switch-back roads down the mountains, with lovely vistas on the side. We drove for several hours and got more than a little lost a few times. We eventually made it to Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve just to the west of Warnambool, along the Great Ocean Road. Tower Hill is an enormous volcanic crater (don’t worry, it’s inactive), rimmed with volcanic ash. There are tons of conical hills within the crater and a lake in the centre of it. It’s a fascinating geological formation, and is teeming with wild Australian wildlife. We had been told by people in the Grampians that we had to go there if we wanted to see wild koalas, which of course we did. Once we drove down into the crater, we stopped under a big eucalypt tree and looked up for a koala….and lo and behold, there was a sleepy koala right near the top, in the first tree we checked! We ate lunch near that tree, happy as clams watching our first live koala take a nap. Koalas are very lethargic creatures who don’t do much other than eat and sleep in trees, so many Australians don’t find them to be very exciting. It was a completely different story for us foreigners however, we couldn’t get enough of them! We went on a circuit hike around the lake in the valley of the crater, always on the lookout for koalas and other wildlife. We saw one more koala that was on the ground waddling around! And it was literally waddling! They have such a hilarious and awkward walk that killed Devon and I….we both ended up on the ground because we were laughing so hard. It’s pretty unusual to see them moving around on the ground since they are usually found lazing around in trees so we were feeling pretty lucky. We also saw 2 huge emus while on our walk which is another cool exotic Australian animal.

Tower Hill-the volcanic crater with the lake in the centre

This koala was posing so nicely for us beside a eucalypt tree...picture perfect!

The hilarious "waddling" koala

One of the emus we saw along the board walk

After we left Tower Hill we drove along the coast and stopped at some stunning lookouts before making our way to Port Campbell where we found a hostel for the night. It was raining pretty hard by this time and was starting to get dark so we were happy to find a warm place to stay. We made rice paper rolls which we were pretty proud of…they were so easy and delicious! Definitely going to be a staple food for me from now on! As we were doing the dishes we ran into a guy in the kitchen that we recognized but we weren’t sure from where. He reminded us that he had been eating breakfast at the same time as us in the hostel in the Grampians! We had all stood at the window together watching a mother kangaroo with a joey in its pouch. It was cool to see the same person at the end of the day in another city. He was a nice Welsh guy who had been working in Australia as an engineer for the last few months and was travelling now. He was an interesting guy so the 3 of us chatted for a while in the kitchen then Devon and I walked down the street to a pub to get something sweet. It was a cold and windy night, but we sat in a pub by the fireplace, looking out the window at the raging sea outside while sharing a delicious piece of carrot cake. It was a really nice way to spend such a cold night!

Watching the sunset over the ocean and spectacular coast. 

The next morning we got up pretty early and made our way straight to the Twelve Apostles. They are incredible rock pillars in the ocean that I had seen back in February but was more than happy to be seeing them again…they are so breathtaking and it was an amazing place to start the day. It was another freezing day unfortunately and with the wind right on the coast we weren’t able to stay there long (not comfortably at least). We spent the rest of the day driving back to Melbourne with many stops on beaches and at spectacular coastal lookouts. It was unfortunate that it had been raining all weekend, but it meant that we got to see tons of rainbows over the beaches which was really beautiful…not quite worth it but made up for it a little.

The Twelve Apostles tucked behind another big rock pillar. 

The Twelve Apostles with a rainbow!

Once we made it back to Melbourne, we returned the car and came back home to get ready for Canada Day which was the next day. We baked cupcakes with white icing and red maple leaves on them as well as a brownie cake that we iced like the Canadian flag. I brought the cupcakes with me to work the next day and we had a Canada day morning tea where everyone helped me to celebrate my country. That night I had a big Canada day party at my place. Devon had decorated the apartment while I was at work so we had a few tiny Canadian flags on the table. Devon and I were decked out in all of the Canadian clothing that we had and some people had really made an effort and wore red and white. A few of my colleagues came straight back with me after work then I had friends dropping in all evening. It was a potluck (which is not a thing here-when I first told everyone that no one had any idea what that meant so I had to say “bring a dish”) and we had a ton of delicious food! Some people tried to be really Canadian with their dishes…one of my friends who is Canadian as well brought bacon and maple syrup and I made pancakes to top it off. Another friend stopped at a chips place and got poutine then to end it all we had the Canadian flag brownie cake. It was a really fun night, with tons of friends and laughter and a little bit of Canadian National Anthem singing of course. I had thought Canada Day would make me feel a bit homesick and lonely but it was the complete opposite…to see so many of my friends here, all from different groups and ages come together to celebrate with me was so special and I felt anything but alone! I have made some amazing friends here and that night really reminded me of that.

The cupcakes and cake we made for Canada Day.

The next day was Devon’s last day in Melbourne. I went to work like usual and she explored more of the city then that night we went and saw the musical Les Miserables! It had been in Melbourne for a few weeks already and there were signs everywhere. I had been really wanting to go but I assumed it would be really expensive like musicals usually are so I hadn’t bothered to look into it. Devon had seen it in Montreal though and loved it so convinced me we should go here. And the tickets were only $45! Granted we were as high up as you can be, but that doesn’t make much of a difference for a musical. The singing and dancing was still so clear and it was incredible! Such a great musical! I was so glad to have someone to go with because I wouldn’t have gone on my own. Devon took a bus up to Canberra the next morning to visit some friends so we had a sad goodbye that morning. We had such a fun time together and it was so good to hang out again after not seeing each other in so long. We saw a lot more of Victoria than I’d seen as well so it was a great week!