Travel Log: Gold Coast ~ Australia (Day 3)

Previous Day (Byron Bay, Lighthouse & Crystal Castle)

Destination: Gold Coast, Australia
Duration: 6 Days 5 Nights (Aug 21~Aug 26, 2011)

Day 3: O’Reilly’s & Tamborine Mountain

Breakfast was sandwich made with vegemite on toasted buttered bread along with scramble egg and bacon. Guess I was insane and starving. *facepalm*

It was an interesting ride today as a New Zealand lady (I do use the term loosely) came on board and started to talk nonstop about how lazy & slow Aussies were. We were dumbfounded as our half of the bus consisted of Aussies. Even the sky was crying along with us for having to endure the obnoxious behavior. We saw some wallabies on our way as well.

A Blurry picture of wallaby - It's not easy to take one as they jump so fast!

Thank God we arrived at an Alpaca farm to escape the disastrous ride. The 1^st thing we saw was: THE CUTE LITTLE PUPPY!!! Oh my Gosh, the puppy was only 2 months old and he was running around under the rain & playing around the grass area of the Farm. He waged his tail to everyone and stared at us with his puppy eyes… *sigh*

Cute Puppy!!!!

Ooowwwwww!!!!!!!

During my puppy swooning, the farm owner was explaining about the alpaca. The George Clooney of Alpaca was apparently named Roy and he had his own Facebook page! A cute alpaca fact – when a female is pregnant and a male approaches her, she will spit on the male’s face! The farm also sold clothing items made with alpaca fleece. It was soft and luxurious – a scarf there cost around AUD 80.


A Scene at the Farm

Roy is the George Clooney of Alpaca!

I think Roy is miffed that i love puppy over him..

It was such a shame that the heavy downpour followed us to our next destination – O’Reilly’s mountain and Lamington National park. We walked along their tree top canopy walk with umbrella. My hand was literally freezing due to the low temperature and rain. According to the brochure, the bridge was 160m long & 16m high. Then we saw this tree surrounded by metal for protection where people can climb on it (1^st deck was 24m above ground and 2^nd deck was 30m above ground!).  Unfortunately, due to the weather condition, it was simply dangerous to climb up as it was really slippery out there. We had to leave the area with much regret. =(


The Tree Top Walk

The Stairway to Heaven

The tour guide (whose name I couldn’t remember!) introduced us to the Strangler Fig – basically they were kind of a parasite which fed & lived on their host tree until the host tree died, decayed & crumbled to the forest floor. When you look inside the fig, you could actually see the shape of the host tree before it died. Cool huh?

The Hole in Strangler Fig.. It used to be the host tree!

By the way, O’Reilly’s was famous due to heroic journey of Bernard O’Reilly in finding and rescuing the only two living survivors of the 1937 Stinson plane crash. Apparently he found them singlehandedly when other rescue parties were searching in totally different area. This guy just had a hunch and got on with it.

There was this O’Reilly’s villa there where you could stay and they also provided special hiking package where you can track the plane crash trail but apparently that would take 2 days!

Before we got on the bus, we were attacked by tons of Crimson Rosella’s, King Parrots and Regent Bower Birds (Okay, I copied the bird names from the brochure, I’m not a bird expert)! These birds were crazy! They could simply stop on top of your head if you stood there long enough! The million dollar questions were: “Are they going to poop on me?!” “Were they descendents of Angry Birds?” “Did I look too much like the green pig to warrant such an attack?”

Angry Birdies!

Attacked!

We were then rescued by our driver to continue our journey to Tamborine Mountain. Tamborine Mountain was foggy & cold as the rain loved us too much to stop. We went into the Tasselldom café for our lunch and cuppa hot tea. We ordered the Tasselldom Special Grill (AUD13.90), Beef & Burgundy Pie (AUD9.90) and a pot of Darjeeling tea (AUD3.90).

The Cafe...

The Interior

The Tasselldom Special Grill was a bit disappointing as we expected something more special but it basically looked and tasted like pizza. The difference was that it was served on Turkish bread rather than normal pizza base.

Tasselldom Special Grill

The Beef & Burgundy Pie was more unique and it was actually my first time to eat this so I was not so sure what it was supposed to taste like. Well, it tasted like wine & beef. By the way, I once heard that Darjeeling was supposed to be the champagne of tea so no complaint here.

Beef & Burgundy Pie

But the one thing that stood out was the overall ambience – it was a small cottage building with English cottage interior. It had a fireplace and the glasses were foggy with rain outside. The feeling was really something else. How I wish to spend my afternoon like this everyday!

Tea Time!

After the lunch, we were asking the driver about Curtis Falls (one of the destination of the day) and apparently all of our tour mates did not want to go due to rain and freezing weather. The driver was nice enough to drive us (only 2 of us!) there to let us explore ourselves. So basically we walked the trail under heavy downpour with umbrella again on the muddy and slippery land & stairs. The driver must’ve thought we were crazy!

The rainforest area was kind of like our Penang National Park with slightly different trees but with much safer trail. We reached Curtis Falls within 10 minutes. The flow was really strong due to heavy rain – we simply snapped some photos and got out of there as it was really freezing.

The Rapids

Curtis Falls!

Random Trees near the Park

The driver then sent us back to Tamborine Gallery Walk (where the café was located) to let us explore around the area. There were winery around the area but as we were not expert on wine, we simply walked around and stumbled upon the Fudge shop – basically Fudge was made with fresh cream and the shop had tons of flavors to choose from. The lady was nice enough to let us try some and I noticed most of them were simply too sweet for my taste. We ended up buying 3 pcs (orea, lemon & dark chocolate) for AUD12.

Fudge! Orgamic! LOL!

Oreo is the most popular

More Fudge!

It was a nice feeling to walk the street in this foggy & misty condition but the eccentric side of me started to wonder when would the monster started to snatch us up like in Stephen King’s “The Mist”. Gosh, I’m such a mood killer! :p

Where is the monster?

It was time to say goodbye to Tamborine Mountain and funny thing was that when the driver dropped off that obnoxious kiwi lady, the whole bus cheered! That showed how “popular” she was! :p

After a short rest in the hotel, we walked to the Q1 Skypoint building – the tallest building in Gold Coast to have a panoramic view of the city. We arrived there around 5.30pm intentionally so that we could enjoy both day and night view. The night view was not as spectacular as we expected but I guess it was due to green reason and Gold Coast highly recommended Green Activity such as water and energy preservation.

Q1 Skypoint Building

A View from the Top

Night View

We then walked across the street to get our dinner at Alfresco on Elston café – a splendid little Italian restaurant which was voted No. 1 at Tripadvisor. The place was jammed pack with patrons and we were lucky to get a table without much waiting. As a voucherolic, we actually got a 30% discount voucher from citysnatch website:-http://www.citysnatch.com.au/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=54&category_id=9&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=18

We order garlic bread (AUD7.90) and a large Alfresco Supremo Pizza (AUD24.90). The food was great but we could actually eat great Italian food with same quality in Penang Bella Italia Restaurant. The mushroom on the pizza was very juicy though. But it was fun to be surrounded by the pretty waitresses with great smile and great service. I noticed that for those paying full price, they were given a shot of complimentary alcohol drink to fight the cold weather. Unfortunately we didn’t get that due to discount voucher. But it was really thoughtful of the owner as we could see that all patrons left with a big smile plastered over their face.

Alfresco on Elston

The Interior

Alfresco Supremo Pizza

Garlic Bread

Next Day (Springbrook, Natural Arch & Tropical Fruit World)