Mermaid Beach-Gold Coast

Saturday, Sunday, Monday

Vacation time! Saturday morning we got up and started packing for our trip to the Gold Coast- Mermaid Beach, to be specific. We needed Kelsey’s passport so that she’d have photo ID for her theme parks pass and wouldn’t you know, it’s wasn't in that wonderfully perfect safe place where we keep things like that. I’m completely panic stricken at the possibility that we've lost it. My best guess is that it’s at Ben’s office since he’s awfully forgetful these days. Let’s hope I’m right. The over an hour search for it reminded me why I always pack the day before, not the day of departure. Lesson learned. By the time we were ready to go, I was so frustrated that I had Ben call a taxi to get us to the train station so that we would be mucking around for another 40 minutes (30 minutes till the bus was due and another 10 for it to be late).

The train ride was uneventful other than the 3 year old little girl behind me. Her favorite word was “Hello”. Very cute for the first twenty minutes or so. I tried at first to engage her in conversation but it turned out that “Hello” was the only word she was willing to say to me. It left me feeling as if I was chatting with a rather large parrot. I felt bad for her daddy who was trying to entertain her. It reminded me of listening to Ben try to entertain our kids when they were that age. “What sound does the cow make?” “Oh, hey, look! There’s a tree”.

My kids think it’s fantastic that you can walk almost anywhere in Brisbane barefooted. I, of course, think it’s completely gross to go into a public restroom in bare feet. They also think that it’s okay to put your feet up on the seats while on public transport. I, however, do not find it nearly as entertaining as they do since you can get fined for it. It’s very irritating to have to remind them about this more than once. I daresay that if they had paying jobs and had to pay said fines out of their own pockets, they might be less willing to put their dirty feet where people have to sit.

Off the train, onto a bus and then got a little lost trying to find the next bus because I had a bit of trouble with the map. I used to be completely useless when it came to map reading but I honestly am much better now. I was just a in a huge hurry. We only have 4 minutes to get to the next stop and usually the only time buses are on time is when you’re late. By some miracle, this time the bus was late! Yay! And God Bless helpful bus drivers. I love it when I tell them where I’m going and they offer to let me know when I’m there.

We got checked in to Sands Turtle Beach Resort and made our way to our room. Up the stairs, down the stairs, up the stairs……I’m not kidding. We had to use our key card to get into the resort area, use it again to go through a hallway to the back path, use it again to get into our building and then one more time to get into the condo. The condo itself is not the nicest we’ve ever stayed it but not the worst either. Only the main living area is air conditioned and it had not been turned on, presumably to save power. It was sooo hot and the bedrooms didn't cool down till sometime in the middle of the night. The ceiling fan in the master bedroom makes a funny sound. Ben dreamed all night about horses because of it. I dreamed about zombies. Did I mention it was pouring rain? We never plan for rain when we’re going somewhere because it just so rarely happens. But, this….this was a torrential downpour that continued all the next day. We have a view of the tennis courts and palm trees, which is nice. There’s plenty of space and the beds are comfortable. The beach is a short walk away but I haven’t been there yet because of the weather.

There’s a tiny café just down the block where we’ve been having breakfast. The women who run it are foreign so I can’t really understand anything they say. As we were finishing our breakfast, the cook came out and said, “What do you feed a green frog?” I was completely flabbergasted because it took me a moment to make out what she was saying and then I thought it was a joke. I hate it when that happens because I have trouble with punch lines anyway and I always feel bad when I don’t understand someone’s accent so I was sure that I’d hurt her feelings if I didn’t “get” the joke. Turns out she was serious. She’d found a green frog and she wanted to keep it as a pet. Thank God Ben was there because he can understand anyone. Whew!

Today (Monday) we went to Pacific Fair because Kelsey needed shoes to wear on the Glow Worn Tour since they won’t let anyone wearing thongs go on it. And Benji needed closed toe shoes for his science class. We tracked down a Kmart and found them on clearance. Yay! I wasn’t sure which stop we were supposed get off at so when I saw the sign for Pacific Fair, we just got off the bus. Then I saw how far the walk was and realized that I was wrong. Luckily, the driver noticed my confusion and said, “Did you want to go to Pacific Fair?” to which I replied, “Yes”. He said, “Then why’d you get off here?” to which I replied, “Because I’m a tourist, I don’t know what I’m doing!” We got back on the bus and got off at the proper stop less than 5 minutes later.
Now we are back at the condo. Benji and Ben went to see Monsters vs. Aliens at the little theater they have here at the resort. Kelsey was playing the ukulele and singing but I’m not sure what she’s up to now. As for me, I’m going to go read for a bit.

Tomorrow….Movie World.

Movie World-Feb. 9th
Rain, rain, and more rain. But, we took a chance and went to the bus stop anyway. The bus was on time. Yay! The bus slowly filled until the driver couldn’t pick anyone else up. Lucky me, there was a big burly fellow hanging onto the rail near me and he had B.O. Dear God, Why oh why must my nose be so sensitive? And the lady in front of me? Drenched in perfume. I couldn’t figure out which one I’d want to aim my vomit at if it came to that.

The weather ended up being quite nice with just a couple of showers throughout the day to kind of cool things down. Notable is the fact that now that the kids are too old to be excited about meeting Sylvester, Tweety, Shaggy or Scooby Doo…..we all felt a little big sheepish when they came around. Lol. The park wasn’t particularly crowded so we went on some of the rides several times in a row.

Kelsey has a new enemy. The “TICKET LADY”!!!!!! We had to turn in her paper pass for one with a photo and that ended up taking a good half hour. And Kelsey was furious that the woman didn’t even say when she was going to snap the photo. So, her pass photo shows her with her eyes closed and a basically blissful expression on her face.

It was a really fun day with a lot of laughs. I was so grateful that we all got to share it. I know that sounds kind of cheesy but it’s the truth.

Springbrook National Forest-Feb. 10th
I just know I’m not going to have the words to properly describe our trip to the rainforest. Breathtaking, exhilarating, nerve wracking, funny, …..no, still doesn’t capture it all.
We had to rent a car for this excursion and once we started up the mountain I could see why. I can’t imagine a bus going over those somewhat rickety looking one lane bridges. I was so relieved to reach the top and stop at the first café we found. OMG, it was so charming. The gardens were so lush and gorgeous that we chose a table outside. Silly me, I was shocked when it started raining. DUH? Rainforest? But, the sun was shining so I didn’t expect it at just that moment. Thank goodness Ben had gone the day before and gotten us cheap little ponchos because that certainly wasn’t the last rain shower we’d see that day. We looked at the tour book they had and decided that the Twin Falls circuit would be a reasonable hike (less than 2 hours/about 4km) and we’d go to the overlook of Purlingbrook Falls (single sheer fall of 106 metres). I know we sounded like tourists with our repeated exclamations of how beautiful everything was and how ill prepared we were for the weather. It seemed significantly colder on the mountain than it did when we left the condo. Clever me wore a tank top, shorts and sandals! Anyway, we stopped at other overlooks, exclaimed repeatedly that it was just so beautiful, so wonderful, so amazing and then we found the beginning of the Twin Falls Circuit. Or not. We were happily hiking along thinking we were on the right track until we hit a dead end. There was a path through the forest but it wasn’t marked and I didn’t want to become a statistic. The headline could read “Stupid Americans get lost in rainforest. Believed to have been eaten by exotic Australian animal they don’t recognize”. So back to the car we went to find the real starting point. We found it with very little trouble, actually just reading the signs helped. We ooohhhhed and aaahhhed over the first part of the trail, the next part of the train, the middle part of the trail and…well, you get the picture. There were warnings not to touch the stinging plants. You don’t have to tell me twice. I wasn’t touching ANYTHING! The rock formations were so exciting. My family is so easy to please. Give us some really cool rocks to look at or walk on and we’re as happy as can be. I do have to say that within a half hour it was becoming glaringly obvious that this hike was going to take longer than anticipated since my darling husband is so easy to please and is really happy being in the moment….he stopped to take photos of EVERYTHING! We all had to pose individually at this rock formation and then pose over there by that pretty plant and “Hey, stand behind the waterfall so I can get your picture”. I was walking ahead to try to hurry things along just a little bit, not much because certainly we want to take our time and enjoy it but just enough to insure that we are out of the forest by dark. As I’m walking down a ramp leaving everyone else behind I see out of the corner of my eye, some reptilian looking skin jumping down at me from the ramp above (the path was zigzagging). In that split second, I searched the recesses of my brain to try to remember if there were any snakes that would literally jump at you!!!!! I started to scream but choked it back very quickly when I realized it was unlikely. Turns out it was some kind of lizard. I have no idea why it jumped like that but it certainly cured me of my “walk ahead” syndrome. From that point on, I let someone else lead. The trail meandered gently….never really making us feel taxed or tired. I wish I had recordings of the silly conversations and us admiring everything…but the thing I most wish we had recorded was the “leech adventures”. At the bottom of one of the falls is a swimming hole. The kids wanted to go swimming, I wanted to keep moving since we still had well over an hour to go and I knew that if they went into the freezing water, they’d spend the next forever complaining about the cold…so I strongly discouraged it. We kept moving…and then suddenly Kelsey stops, turns around to look at us and asks if that’s a leech on her elbow. Sure enough, it was. I said, “Get the camera quick”. At that point she starts to say, “get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off” louder and faster and louder and faster. I quickly realized that she wasn’t as calm as she first appeared so we said nevermind about the camera and Ben pulled out his pocket knife to scrape it off while the rest of us started frantically checking ourselves for leeches. I didn’t have any at that point but I made up for it later. Benji found one so Ben helped him get that off. Let’s just say that it’s way more interesting when the leech is on someone else. When it was on me, my logical mind was saying, “Hey, look, there’s a small leech on me. It’s basically harmless and easy to remove. There’s no need to panic” while my mouth is bellowing, “GET IT OFF, HURRY, HURRY, HURRY, HURRY!!!!!”. I found a tiny one latched onto me between my toes. ICK. The rest of our hike, we’d stop every so many minutes and clear off the leeches. And let it be said that everyone was grateful that they didn’t go into the swimming hole because it’s highly likely they would have come out covered in leeches. Anyway, we saw ancient grass trees, prehistoric ferns, gorgeous rock overhangs, and a Lamington blue crayfish. When we went behind Blackfellow Falls, we couldn’t even stop to admire it because it was like running through a violent rainstorm. I pulled my poncho as close to my body as possible and still ended up pretty wet. Luckily, by this point we’d been walking awhile so I wasn’t too cold. By the time we reached Canyon Lookout, we were done. Ben, dear that he is, offered to finish the trail alone and bring the car to come get us. According to the guide book, it was only about 10 more minutes on the trail but I think it ended up being a little bit more than that.

Next, we went back down the mountain for dinner. We ended up a cute Thai restaurant that let Benji bring in pizza. It’s possible that I was just really, really hungry but I think that was the best restaurant meal I’ve had since moving to Brisbane.

After dinner, we headed back up the mountain to the Glow Worm Research Center for a tour. Not another soul in sight. We thought that we were in the beginning of a horror movie. I would have really started to worry if we’d been the only people to show up for the tour. But, there was a talkative drunk fellow with three young women and another couple so it seemed legit enough. Turns out, it was very interesting. The man who owned the place had been researching bioluminescence for over 20 years. His goal is to produce something that will show us where cancer is in the body that will be less harmful than what’s used now. His latest research focuses on mushrooms. Did I know that there were mushrooms that glowed in the dark? I don’t think I did! He took us to his underground research area where he’s cultivating the mushrooms. He told us about a little experiment that he did. He ate some of the mushrooms to see if they would be filtered out before they showed up in a way that could be seen. He said that he glowed in his eyes and anywhere that the blood was close to the surface of the skin. And when it left his body in the form of urine….yep, it glowed in the dark. Then we went outside and down the hill to see the glow worms. It was kind of like looking at Christmas lights on a rock wall- Very pretty and magical. After the tour, we headed back down the mountain and returned to the condo completely exhausted.

February 11th
We all agreed that a day of rest was necessary. My legs were aching from the previous day’s adventures and Ben was itching to get down to the beach so that’s where we spent most of the day. The water was a great temperature but the current was so strong. The guarded area was tiny since there were riptides on both sides just outside where you were supposed to be swimming. But, that was fine since there were a grand total of 6 people swimming besides us. Ben fell asleep in the sun after saying that he wanted to get a little sun on his back. I didn’t realize that he wasn’t laying there for that long on purpose. I thought he was awake! (It couldn’t have been more than a half hour but he got burnt anyway.) I have a handy dandy new UV protective shirt so I was fine. I never thought I’d be sitting on the beach wearing basically a long sleeved swimsuit but there I was, preserving my delicate skin. That evening, Ben helped Benji with some math homework and I tried to concentrate on reading until it was late enough to qualify as bedtime.

February 12th-Wet’n’ Wild Water World
Talk about having to work for your fun. I’ve never walked up so many steps in my entire life. And our feet….OOOWWW, we’re lucky they aren’t all blistered. The sidewalks were sooooo hot. But, what a blast! I love waterslides and scream like a crazy person on the big ones which makes the kids laugh….and I love seeing that. We all have uv sunshirts so no one got sunburned. (BONUS!) Ben rented a cabana by the wave pool so that when we were resting we were completely in the shade. There were no cabana boys so I had to pretend he was one. (“Excuse me, Dear, could I get some tea, please?”, “Pardon me, could you get my sandals from the locker if you’re heading that way anyway?”, “Going to get your book? Well, I wouldn’t mind having mine, too, if it’s not too much trouble”. J )I swear, I think I’m about to relax myself into a complete stupor. Kelsey and Benji went out first to explore the park and then I took off with them to ride the really cool ones. Later in the afternoon, Kelsey retired to the cabana for a little nap. She hasn’t been feeling well this week so we’ll have to try to go back when she’s better able to enjoy everything. I honestly thought we’d be finished by 3pm but we stayed until they closed at 5pm. We were starving by the time we got back to the condo so we stopped at Trio Romano for some yummy Italian food. It was soooooo delicious!