Wednesday, 9 December 2009

S E E P I N G T H R O U G H T H E T R E E S














SPRINGBROOK NATURAL BRIDGE, QLD

In the Gold Coast hinterland you will found Springbrook Natural Bridge within Springbrook National Park which is part of the northern rim of ancient volcano Mount Warning. The drive to Springbrook was part of the adventure, the road is on the edge of the cliff and winds round each corner and at various points goes into one lane, if you are in the passenger seat do yourself a favour and don't look down- I was gripping on to my seat, it certainly didn't help when some of the white posts on the edge of the cliff on each bend had been knocked down! When we finally got there we headed to the Natural Bridge region where you pass a small village with a few houses and the smallest Primary School I have ever seen. Once my heart rate had slowed down we got out the car and went to explore, there is a walking track taking you through part of the sub-tropical rainforest, round to the waterfall which goes through Cave Creek where at night you can go inside to see glow worms.

Sunday, 6 December 2009

W H E N T H E S U N G O E S D O W N













From the nights spent hanging out at the beach with a couple beers and a pizza, a trip to the cinema to see New Moon, stracciatella ice cream on the boardwalk and the most delicious meal at Thai Thai. If you ever find yourself in Broadbeach on the Gold Coast Queensland make a trip to Thai Thai the food was amazing (try the red thai curry with coconut rice) and like many other restaurants here its BYO, which is great when you are on a budget especially as it's conveniently next to an off-licence !

Saturday, 14 November 2009

S U N D A Z E






When any Londoner thinks of November you conjure up ideas of dark evenings, grey days and cold mornings, it's the month where you say goodbye to autumn, hello to winter and start your christmas shopping. This year it is a different story for us. November in Australia means getting ready for summer, hot days and warm nights. Yes there's still the matter of christmas presents but this year we won't be panic shopping either.

Sunday, 8 November 2009

S E A S I C K N E S S













Between June and November thousands of Humpback whales migrate to and then from the warm Queensland waters, we managed to spot them on their annual commute back to the Antarctic. It was truelly amazing to see such large animals in their natural habitat, I stupidly only took my digital camera rather than my SLR which had a better zoom on it, and in the bright sunshine I couldn't see the LCD screen on the digital camera so was snapping away blindly at the ocean whenever the mammal came to the surface, so was pleasantly surprised that I managed to get some half decent shots-including one of the infamous 'blow'. However the whole whale watching trip was tainted by me getting really seasick, we were warned when we got there that it was a really bad day for seasickness, I smugly turned to Ben and said I will be fine I don't suffer from seasickness- not quite sure how I came to this conclusion since I haven't been on a boat/ferry since before the Eurostar! Once we were off the boat I started to feel better and as part of our whale watching ticket we got access to Seaworld, as we have been to the one in Florida we didn't bother with the shows as it was quite late in the day by this point instead we went and had lunch overlooking the dolphin nursery-spot the baby dolphin in the first photo-that little one was only 6 months old-cutest thing I have ever seen (except maybe my cat when he was a baby)! I could have spent the whole day staring at the dolphins (and they were definitely staring back at me), but Ben dragged me off to see the Polar bears. Seeing the white furred bears was quite amazing, they are beautiful creatures and you really want to give them a big cuddle- which obviously you can't because they would crush you! Then it was off to the shark aquarium.....dun dun dun

Disclaimer: the photos are in the post below; these weren't taken at our local beach nor did we learn to scuba dive- the sharks were safely behind glass.

Wednesday, 4 November 2009

S H A R K I N F E S T E D W A T E R S








The marine life at our local beach!!!!!