Adventures in Queensland

A couple weeks ago I made my first out of state trip and met up with Mary in Queensland for a few days of R&R. I had a really nice time catching up with Mary and seeing some more of Australia. Here's how it went.

Thursday
I woke up bright and early and made my way to the airport. This was my first time on a domestic flight in Australia, so I wanted to make sure I got to the airport with lots of time in case of any snags. But it turns out that's not really a worry here. I wasn't once asked for ID to confirm that I was, in fact, the person whose name was on the ticket. After walking through the security checkpoint with little more than a nod from the staff, I realized that people who didn't have boarding passes were at the gate sending their friends and family off! I suspect that this wouldn't happen on international flights, but I'll just have to go travel and find out.

So 9am I'm at the airport, checked into my flight, and I decide to grab a coffee. The little airport cafe that I went to was also a bar, and much to my surprise, at 9am, there was a group of guy who had been sitting at a table drinking for a while. Now, I've seen piles and piles of empty beer bottles at 9am before, but they've been from drinking that stopped by about 6am, not from drinking that had more recently started. One of the guys spilt some of my coffee on my hand as he wasn't paying attention and was too busy trying to flirt with the staff to notice me in my bright red jacket with a hot coffee. Me who had been up for a few hours and had not yet had any coffee. Me who now had a hot, sticky hand covered in coffee. I managed to refrain from dumping the rest of my coffee on him, but only just.

My flight to Brisbane was wonderfully uneventful. I flew on a plane named 'Peta Pan'. I got into Brisbane a bit after noon, and instead of grabbing lunch at the airport like a sensible person, I headed straight for the train station and got on the train to the Gold Coast to meet up with Mary. My train ride was an hour and a half, so by the time I got off, I was really ready for some lunch! There was a mall near the train station, so I headed over and got myself something from the foodcourt before going back to the taxi stand at the train station. I'm really glad I went and got lunch first because I then spent the next hour waiting for a taxi, with a growing number of other people also desperately waiting for a taxi. Finally a couple of taxi's showed up and I was able to arrange for several more taxis to come and get the rest of us.

Mary's conference was at the Hyatt at Sanctuary Cove, and it was really beautiful there. It was a resort community, a playground for the rich, as you could see by the numberous yachts docked at the pier. I got myself settled in at the hotel and had a bit of a wander before finding a nice table by one of the pools to sit at and read while I waited for Mary. We met up and went for a swim, which was nice and relaxing. She had a dinner event, so we parted ways and I went into the resort village for dinner. After dinner I made my way back to the hotel room and soon found myself barely able to open my eyes. I slept well that night.

Friday
Mary's conference was continuing on until the afternoon, so I had decided to spend the morning getting a pedicure. I went down to the lobby to have breakfast at the hotel restaurant. I wasn't sure how they worked the seating, if you had to wait or if you just sat yourself down somewhere. There was no sign and no staff willing to come over and help me, so I shrugged and found a table and sat down to brunch. I helped myself to breakfast, and eventually someone came around and served me coffee. After I had finished breakfast I was faced with figuring out how to pay. Again there was no staff willing to pay me any attention and I was quickly realizing that you were supposed to pay before sitting down. So I thought to myself "well, I could wait around for someone to pay attention to me, explain the situation, and pay, or I could leave." So I left.

I wandered around the hotel grounds until it was time for my pedicure, then went to the lovely hotel spa that had a very similar feel to the Hepburn Spa (only Hepburn looks more like the BC rainforest, and actually was nicer -- posher than posh). The girl that did my pedicure was really nice, and really into naturopathy, so that was pretty cool. Afterwards I wandered around the resort community, checking out the shops, and I went for lunch at a Mexican restaurant.

Mary and I met up and decided to drive out to Surfers Paradise for the afternoon. After a few wrong turns, we got ourselves going the right direction and made our way into Surfers Paradise. I probably never would have gone out had we not gone that afternoon since Surfers Paradise is just a big tourist city, but I'm glad that I got to go. And I'm glad that I don't ever have to go back again.

Surfers looks a lot like Miami as you drive into it. They were even setting up the streets for some sort of NASCAR racing (or some kind of car racing), and I do have to admit that THAT would be pretty cool to watch. The main drag was full of bars and restaurants and touristy shops. The beach was pretty though. And the water was not nearly as cold as I thought it would be. When we first dipped our feet in I had no interest in going any further, but Mary convinced me to change into my swimmers and she confinced me to go into the water, and once I did I had a great time. It was actually my first time really going into the ocean since I've been in Australia, and I had forgotten about how fun facing the waves can be. I'm actually pretty nervous about going in the ocean around Melbourne since the water in some spots is quite dangerous. Now that the weather is picking up though, I'll probably go out to the beaches with my Melbourne friends who know where it's safe to go for a swim.

After we had our dip in the ocean we wandered around the town for a bit and then headed back to Sanctuary Cove. We had dinner at the hotel that night, at the same place where I had dined and dashed at breakfast. This time we made sure to pay before sitting down. Dinner was alright, but a dinner buffet is generally not geared towards vegetarians, so my food options were rather limited considering the price. Not that I was paying, but still.

Saturday
The time had come to check out of our lovely hotel and head on to Brisbane. We had breakfast at a restaurant in the resort town and people watched as the locals drove their golf carts in to pick up brekky or a coffee. We debated heading straight into Brisbane and going shopping or going somewhere in the countryside around the Gold Coast and heading into Brisbane for the evening. We decided on going to O'Reilly's Bird Sanctuary, which was about an hour away and involved driving up a mountain.

On the way we stopped at a winnery that was along a river where you could look for platapus. We didn't see any platapus in our brief stop, but it was completely beautiful there and I have filed it away as a place to go back to one day.

We made our way up the narrow, windy road to the top of the mountain (don't think Rockies, much smaller than that) and found ourselves at the bird sanctuary. There was a tree top walk and a botanical garden that you could wander through, so we went and had a walk through. Then we had lunch at the cafe that looked out into the surrounding hills. It was quite lovely. Lots of birds came by trying to sneak some food.

After lunch we bought some bird seed and went and fed the birds. There were scarlett rosellas and king parrots flying around, landing on people, and eatting seed out of our hands. I was nervous at first to have birds climbing all over me to get at the seed, but as soon as the first bird came and landed on my arm I was fine. Soon we had a bird on each arm and an occassional bird on our head. A king parrot decided to land on my boob at one point. I didn't particularly enjoy having bird wings flapping in my face while said bird tried to get its footing on my chest, but it soon flew off. We had a good time feeding the birds, and eventually I'll get around to putting up the pictures.

As we left the bird sanctuary, at the top of the mountain, Mary set the GPS in the car to tell us how to get to our hotel in Brisbane. Now, we had to spend the first 30-40 minutes of the trip on a narrow road that has no other option than the direction you are going in, so the GPS really wasn't necessary until we got to the base of the mountain. As soon as we went to head out of the parking lot the GPS gave us the wrong direction. Since we knew we couldn't go where the GPS was telling us, we ignored it. In retrospect, what we should have done was waited until we got to the winnery at the bottom of the mountain, pulled over, and set up the GPS. But we didn't.

We continued on, going the way we had come up, laughing at the directions the GPS was giving us. We figured that once it got it's baring straight it would route recalculate us onto the right path. Nope. We drove on down a country road and eventually came upon a town. There was a sign that said Brisbane was to the left and the Gold Coast to the right. So left we went. We drove down a narrow country backroad with no sign of the highway anywhere, and no sign saying anything about how far we were from Brisbane.

We turned around and made our way back to the town. I suggested that we stop and ask someone for directions, but Mary decided to try relying on the GPS instead. So we followed the directions on the GPS. We followed them until we suddenly found ourselves heading back to the bird sanctuary. This was when we realized that the GPS was so confused from being started at the top of the mountain, that it didn't know what we wanted and it wanted us to go back to our starting point to start our journey again. We pulled over at the winnery to figure out a new plan.

Eventually we ended up deciding to drive back to the town and go right and try the Gold Coast (again in lue of stopping for directions). Fortunately, this time we were able to head out of the country and towards the city. We were quite relieved to see what I imagine was Surfers Paradise cropping up against the now dark sky. Fortunately, we had to stop for gas and there was a gas station open as we came up to the main road. As Mary filled up the car, I ran in and asked for directions to Brisbane. The guy at the counter was very helpful and gave me very clear directions on how to get to the proper highway.

We set off from the gas station and found our way onto the highway with ease. It still took awhile to get to Brisbane, but it was smooth sailing. I was even able to fix the GPS so that it wasn't trying to take us back up a mountain anymore, but was actually telling us how to get to our hotel. We got a little turned around as we tried to navigate the streets of the Brisbane CBD, but it didn't take us long to get sorted out and find our hotel.

After getting ourselves settled in at the Hilton, we went out wandering on the Queen St. mall, looking for a place to grab some dinner. We ended up eatting at this very campy restaurant called Jo Jo's. It was on the first level of one of the buildings along the mall, and had a balcony with tables overlooking the mall. There was a bar that served champaigne, and tables you had to wait to be seated out, but you ordered your food from a counter like in a foodcourt. It was amusingly bizarre. After dinner we had a bit of a walk around the CBD. I had a laugh because Brisbane's CBD has nearly the same lay out as Melbourne's.

Sunday
Sunday was our last day together. We went out to the Queen Street mall for breakfast at one of the little pubs along the mall. It was okay, they screwed up my coffee order, which I wasn't pleased about, but we went and got coffee from another place. We didn't have a lot of time before Mary had to head off to the airport, so we went and check out Myer for a bit then headed back to the hotel to check out. I saw Mary off, put my suitcase in storage, and went back to the mall.

Now, Melbourne is the shopping capital of Australia, so I wasn't particularly excited about the Queen St mall, but I figured that since I had a few hours on my hands I might as well do some window shopping and see if I could find anything I wanted to buy when I got paid the next week. I did end up buying a dress at one store that wasn't a chain I'd be able to find in Melbourne, but that was about it.

I had lunch at a cafe in the mall, then grabbed my suitcase from the hotel and walked over to the train station where I caught a train to the airport. Then it was smooth flying all the way home.

All in all it was a nice getaway. I was glad to spend some time in the ocean and to get to experience some hot weather. My body is craving summer, having gone much longer than usual without one. The temperature is starting to rise in Melbourne though, and as it does, the Christmas decorations are starting to find their way into the shops...