Gold Coast vol 1: forever kids at heart

Theme parks are simply amazing! Gold Coast is the mother of theme parks - a total paradise for thrill seekers. When driving back from Brissie towards Surfers Paradise we decided to do something we've been dying to do for ages, take time off for a couple of weeks, live cheap and enjoy the amusement parks. We bought the passes which thanks to some combo deals were not even THAT expensive and are worth all the money. We could keep going to the parks until the end of june 2015.

There are two water parks: Wet'n'wild and Whitewater World. Although it's winter, the weather in Gold Coast is summery. Locals don't seem to think that way, so there is close to no lines at times. There is an attraction that requires you to climb into a capsule, counts to three and loses the bottom, so you fall into the tube and do an almost 360 loop somewhere in the middle! Plus, some shared rides: sitting in a tube with friends and screaming of laughter every time a waterfall splashes.

Seaworld has a lot of sweet sea creatures and a couple good rides, the best being “Storm Coaster” which soaks its passengers the most I've seen any ride do. Literally, there is not a dry spot after exiting this ride so why not do it 7 times in a row.

What I like about theme parks in Australia, if they use animals in their shows, which they do, they make it educational, train them and explain the spectators their behaviour and acknowledge they are living creatures who don't always do what people want, so deal with it if the show doesn't go as planned. It seems the employees, the trainers at least, are having the time of their lives doing their job, and the animals, accustomed to them, don't mind either. I hate animals being used as entertainment, but if they do, they at least do it like that.

Happy 1st birthday to a polar bear cub Henry! 

Warner Bros Movie World has the worst shops... just wanna buy everything, as everything is superhero or cute-childhood-favorite-cartoon-character-related. Also, all favorite characters walk around in the park, taking a photo with ALL OF THEM is mandatory!!! And, Arkham Asyleum, known as Joker's ride, is not a bad ride to go on!

Hollywood stunt show. They always take "volunteers" from the public. A girl, who actually is random, and a guy who is an actor. We went there a couple of times and recognised the guy once. Went and sat behind him. He was playing games on his phone, keeping a low profile. It started raining. Matt: "Hey, your overalls there on the stage are getting wet!" The guy held his cool "I don't know what you're talking about."

with Dan, Matt, Sylvester and Keiu

Finally Dreamworld, other parks have some really great rides, this park has many! I could keep going there, riding the same rides and not being tired of them for ages. It's hard to choose but my top three in random order would be: The Giant drop (This does not get old, makes you feel wobbly every time, the tallest free-falling ride in the world, 39 stories about 119m high and falls about 135km/h, you know you fall and itis an attraction, but every time, it feels there is no end to the falling), Tower of Terror II (first bundling off through a 206m tunnel backwards, then being shot 100m into the air face gravity going down in the speed of 161 km/h) and Zombie Evolution: The Battle for Kevil Hill (Laser Tag!!! What else do I need to say, ultimate fun!)

bumper cars

There were basically no lines, thank god, as patience is not our strong suit.

What a legend! Giant drop!! And the Tower of Terror on the side of it. 

Matt: "can we take a picture so that he is not smiling?" 

As we need to live cheap, we shop in Aldi and live in a caravan park. Most of our neighbors are elderly people, who have fun, memorable stories to share and sweet, crazy dogs who can't get enough of playing. The caravan park is situated at Upper-Coomera, a suburb-like little town close to Surfers Paradise. It has exactly one pub, but this has free pool and free jukebox on thursday nights!

We have made it to “the city” aka Surfers a couple of times to enjoy civilization and beach. Met Matt's friends one friday night for a beer and headed to the Beergarden for a band called “Venus envy”. A coverband, but good old rock'n'roll covers!

Another time, decided to check out actual nightlife, a club called “Sin City” has a ladies night every tuesday, as tuesdays have bacame our tradition for “big nights” this one did not disappoint either. Ladies night means free entry for ladies until 10pm and free drinks all night long as long as they keep their cup. (And using trial and error method, we made sure, if a cup does get lost, it is not too hard to steal a new one).

The note we left to a really helpful guy who offered to wake us up in the morning and use the pools and bathrooms at his house, when we were camping next to it.

Also, an irish pub called Waxy's has daily specials and 2 dollar steaks on sundays, always worth going, also 3 dollar Budweiser on these nights, note that none of the crowd is eating nor drinking anything else. The bar has an Estonian security guard. On the fourth time visiting the place, he asked to see an id. While giving me back mine, he said “aitäh” (thank you in Estonian). I was so confused and gleamed to Keiu “he said thank you in Estonian!!!”. She just blinked at me while the guy snorted “yes", in clear Estonian, "I did.”

As we need a job quickly, we were, and still are thinking about getting a job as pedicab drivers, work and excersise at the same time! Chatted to one of the drivers in the city, will ring up the company soon enough, when something else doesn't come up.

Skypoint in Q1 tower in Surfers, the theme park pass gives a free entry to the viewing platform as well.  5th tallest residential building in the world and 27th tallest building in general, at 322.5m tall, it's longer than Chrysler building in NY for example. 

Headed to Brissie on wednesday to pick up Matt's brother from the airport. Decided to sleep in the car in New Farm park, where we have nested once before, this time, rangers showed up, full on with flashlights and speakerphones and gave us a warning to leave quick and never come back, or we'd get 550 dollars fine EACH! We took them up on the offer and disappeared, to couple km-s away and camped in front of someones house. Ended up back in the park the next morning, as they do have barbecues, toilets and free wifi. It is pretty great that basically every park, national park and beach in Australia has free gas-barbecues. Some are terribly slow, but toast is better than plain bread.

Picked up Dan thursday afternoon and drove back to our home-sweet-home Karavan park in Upper Coomera. Decided to celebrate with goon. Walked to our local pub in the evening but it had closed itself and it started pouring rain. (What's with the rainy season?) Grabbed a meal from Domino's.

Matt: “can we have pizza nr... and a garlic bread on the house?” Cashier half-smiled and gave us that free garlic bread. When our pizza was ready Matt tried to score another one, succeeded and got 4 more pizzas on the house, went to buy a can of lemonade later, came back with two, and as it still was pouring a delivery guy took us home after. Pure gold!

The night continued to be rainy, our tent got a bit soaked.. What is a wise choice to do with a rainy day? Go to an outdoors water-park! Done! After every couple slides we ended up in hot-springs. Sitting down and relaxing is way too mainstream, splashing and drowning each other and pissing off every possible supervisor is so much more fun. As it kept raining pretty much the whole time, when back at home, what a nice surprise, our tent was completely soaked, as was everything inside it, there was a half-a-meter pond under our tent. Never have I ever had to drain water out of my pillow before!

Went fishing, caught nothing, celebrated with more goon. Joined forces for dinner with our lovely neighbors. As mentioned, most of our neighbors are elderly people, then right next to us now lives a couple our-age with a 6-month-old pet kangaroo. After dinner we inaugurated our new beer-boardgame we got from op-shop for 2 dollars. The game has the stupidest rules which makes it a true parlour game.

Went to explore the nearby Mt.Tamborine. Waterfalls, woods and national parks.

Dan: "not a bad view, if you like trees"

For the last time, living in a caravan park can be awesome (I wouldn't mind growing up in one if it'd be cool like this one), our neighbors are total legends, half of our food comes from us being at the right time at a right place, we end up at a local bbq spot when they are finishing their feed and we are starting ours, and they force us take their food or wine, if we refuse, they threaten to throw it away, legends eh! A guy named Malcolm grows his own greens, we lack these those days as our boys think salad is for cows and rabbits only. We get awesome cucumbers and else from him! He also drinks good port.. Another unforgettable neighbor is a lady from Germany, who grew up in the middle of WWII, has been living in Oz most of her life, teaches ballet and has ten times more guts and character than most people I know.

Scored a 1000 piece puzzle from an OP-shop for rainy days. 100 would have been more appropriate, or 10..  as this turned out to be a mission impossible. There were pieces missing most probably as well.

Another proof that OP-shops are cool!

They had a church barbecue at the karavan park on wednesday night, as they do every 2 weeks. Free sausages, onions, bread and lemonade. They made us take quite a lot of spare as it is all donated and on its last limit of freshness. Met another bunch of interesting characters.

Mondays are a bowling night at Surfers Tenpin Bowling Club, a drink worth of 6 dollars equals a free game, we had a couple, I haven't played in years, took a bit of getting used to but was fun! Dan used to be a state champion, so we didn't stand a chance anyways. The ping pong after, was just a cherry on top.

Bowling attire

Got a hint from a neighbor that there is a nice fishing spot and in general a beautiful beach near Seaworld, spent an afternoon on the beach, walked up to the lighthouse and saved a couple of crabs. “Where do you get the crabs?” “in the bar??” On the way to the beach, just when entering Surfers, there is the most epic playground ever, monorail, lil ziplines, a huge variety of swings and the most important – a trampoline mountain kinda thingy!! Backflips, frontflips.. let's get it on.

Crab rescue

Went to Brisbane again. Spent the day, discovering more of the town on a free ferry that does a proper river cruise although really really slowly which makes  it pretty annoying. Especially when asian tourists don't care about the safety regulations as they need a better photo and the captain has to stop the boat and go discipline them.

Notice the giant spider chillin there

On for the night: “British India” concert vol 6!! “Won” 4 free vip tickets by letting Coopers beer company know that their campaign for winning tickets is not really working. Speak up and claim the reward. Too easy. Or, almost too easy as Coopers had "forgot" to put us on the list, talked our way in anyways. Was a great small gig. Had a fun chat with the boys after as usual and just is case, as it might be our last gig, as they start recording a new album, we got them all to draw into "Wreck this journal"

Matt and Dan's artwork.

Managed to finish a book in these hectic 2 months: "Ronnie" by Ronnie Wood from Rolling Stones. Autobiography, and one of the best reads I've ever had.