Tallebudgera and Burleigh

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Today we visited two parks in hopes of seeing Koalas (or just beautiful nature, but second to fluffy Koalas). I walked so slowly, always looking up, never mind those snakes (there were none), but not seeing a single one. Another day.

Tallebudgera Creek Conservation Park (Mangrove Trail)

The Mangrove Trail starts just at David Fleay Wildlife Park in Burleigh Heads and, as the name states, goes through mangrove swamps. At least a little bit. Then the path was up on the side of the hill, among tall trees and countless birds everywhere. It was magical! I’m so glad there are parts here which are untouched and unexploited. It felt like walking through the rainforest. No koalas, even though there were several warning signs of them being present.

Before reaching Burleigh Heads National Park, we had to cross through a neighborhood, and honestly, living centrally is amazing, but I could see myself living on Ocean Parade or Vantage Point Drive one day.

Burleigh Heads National Park (Ocean View Lookout Track)

There are three tracks in Burleigh Heads National Park and we have walked two of them now, the Ocean View and the Ocean View Lookout. The Lookout Track today, I feel like the name is a bit deceiving. We saw the ocean only at the Burleigh Hill Lookout spot because the forest was so dense. The trees were massive and some trunks were so big and weirdly shaped. No koalas here either. I’ve heard you can see them in this national park, but maybe our third time, on the Rainforest Track.

Before we even came to the park, we saw a sleeping frogmouth owl on a sign. It slept with its head up. I think this was the first one we saw, unless the big owl we saw one evening on our first week here in a tree 2dm above our heads was one. It probably was a frogmouth as well.

Byron Bay

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We left Queensland today, and not just for a short while on foot, but actually going down south for a bit with an Uber. 45 minutes south of here lies Byron Bay, home to Australia mainland’s most eastern point. And also hometown to Parkway Drive.

We got up at sunrise, took an uber with an amazing driver all the way down to Byron Bay. First thing we notice, the wind. Holy schmoly! I think it was windy back in Kirra as well, but I doubt it was as windy. This was ridiculous! And with the clear skies and lots of sun, I just knew we would be dead by the time we came home. Which was true.

We started by walking around in central Byron Bay, just to get the feel of it. Had breakfast at The Hum, close to the beach. We then started walking toward the lighthouse. Our initial plan was to watch the sunset from up there, but we got too tired and were on our way home when the sun set.

On our way up there, we stopped all the time, looking at the beautiful nature. There were signs telling us there were wild Koalas in the roadside trees. But we never saw any… We stopped at The Pass, a pretty cool rock formation and Fisherman’s Lookout where I saw some whales through my new binoculars, but due to the wind, they were shaking so much it was hard to see. Tons of kitesurfers! Some jumped extremely high. Lunch/fika at The Pass Cafe where they had saffron buns and really good smoothies.

When we neared the Cape Bay Lighthouse, we noticed a lot of people standing by the rails overlooking the ocean. Of course, the ocean is beautiful. But we quickly learned that there were so many whales out there! Like countless of them. Breaching and breathing everywhere. There were two swimming so close to the shore that we could see their shadows under the surface and follow them exactly where they went. It was magical! I saw it all through my binoculars and could count the humps on their backs. MAGICAL! Mikael managed to film them.

We had a second fika up at the cafe by the lighthouse to gather some strength before trying to get back home. Which turned out to be harder than we thought. No Uber wanted to drive all the way up to Coolangatta, across the border. So we had to get a normal taxi, for three times as much. Not fun. But oh well. We came home and had the sweetest taxi driver and his son drive us back to Kirra.

All in all, Byron Bay was small, cosy, but windy. And the best part were all the whales! Don’t really see what all the hype is about though if I’m being completely honest.

Sunrise in Kirra. Downtown Byron was tiny. Reminded me a lot of SLO, CA (San Luis Obispo) which was nice. Julian Rocks, a pretty cool diving spot that I wish to dive soon. On our way to the lighthouse. Lunch/fika at The Pass Cafe. They had saffron buns! The Pass. So many kitesurfers. I actually managed to get a picture of a whale. Our second kookaburra.

Shopping and whales

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Today was all about whales and dolphins and shopping. Super spontaneous. I started the day with my morning coffee on the balcony with the short Brandon Sanderson novella The Emperor’s Soul. The sun was out, clear blue sky after a night of rain. I can definitely live with that.

We took a spontaneous stroll, had lunch at Coolangatta Hotel and walked further south to Rainbow Bay Lookout again. We were not disappointed. First, we saw a huge lizard! Then we saw beautiful beaches, followed by several whales breaching which inspired us to instantly google where the closest shop was where we could buy binoculars. On our way there, before we even left Rainbow Bay Lookout, we saw a big pod of dolphins swimming right behind the surfers and I instantly felt sad that we’ve been here more than a month, and I haven’t gone surfing yet! Another big lizard, some sleeping brush turkeys and we were back to the esplanade, taking a quick stop at Ripcurl. Which turned out to not be such a quick stop. I bought a bikini, a hooded beach towel, and a normal towel. I am ready to fully go in the sea now! Mikael bought a t-shirt, a flannel shirt, a pair of pants, socks, a hat, a wallet, a backpack, and a water bottle. Big time shopping! And that was not the end of our spree. Our last stop was Wade’s World, a photography shop where we bought two pairs of binoculars.

At the pier right below Kirra Hill, we saw two whales breaching, just minutes after we arrived. And they did it twice, before waiving their tails and just showing off their backs and eventually going back under. How unreal wasn’t that? So worth getting those Nikon binoculars. We also talked a bit with an American lady who walked past and asked us if we had seen anything. She said that later in the season, the whales come really close to shore. That will be exciting!

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

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Today was spent at Currumbin Wildlife Sancturay, 15 min away with the bus from where we are staying in Kirra. As long as we are doing things along the Gold Coast Hwy, the buses and trams are amazing. And in August, one trip with bus, tram or train will be only 50 cents.

We spent the full day at the Wildlife Sancturay and we sure got tired after running around, listening to talks, looking at all the cute animals and reading interesting facts. It was $65 per person and was bigger than I thought at first.

In the morning and afternoon, they had Lorikeet feeding just outside the entrance to the sanctuary. There were tons of the colorful birds, they were sitting on people and chatting. Just inside the entrance, we saw our first koalas! Pelican and eel feeding was pretty cool. The pelicans were huge! 2,5m wingspan. The eels were huge and apparently only ate things on shore and reacted to vibrations. So the feeders stomped on the ground and they almost jumped out of the water and ate. All so they wouldn’t lose their natural instincts once they were released back in the wild. They apparently can bite pretty bad, so when fishing from shore, one has to wear good boots. There were so many kangaroos here. They were mostly inside there “no people zone” which was totally understandable. But there was one mama roo that crawled under the rope to get some pets and pellets. Surprisingly soft! Emus walked around and also enjoyed getting back strokes. And then there were my favorite animal in the world, the red panda in the Lost Valley. In the Lost Valley were Capybaras as well. And tree kangaroos. And Binturongs. Inside the massive aviary in the Lost Valley. Glossy Ibis, a relative, I would assume, to the White Ibis (Bin Chickens) that runs around everywhere. There were also sunbathing lemurs inside the aviary. Inside the Sanctuary they also have the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital, the world’s busiest wildlife hospital. At 11:30 am, they had a patient behind glass doors and a presentation of what they do. She said they had 17 000 wild animals coming through every year. The koala on the table today was Tom Hunks, very similar looking to the actor, but more hunky. They name every animal that comes through to more easily reach out to people for donations and the ability to keep going. It all seemed very genuine! Lunch at The Homestead was so good! And not too expensive. Or maybe we have gotten used to the prices here. A monitor lizard. They can run up to 40km/h! Freshwater crocodiles. Rock wallabys. Boss Hog, 5m, 700kg, probably 60-70 years old. That’s a big salty! They had so many birds! And so many koalas! More wallabys. We ended the day by going to Wild Skies, a show with and about birds. It was so good! The birds, black cockatoos, owls, macaws and Australia’s biggest bird of prey Wedge-tailed eagle. They presented it in such an interesting and fun way. Highly recommend! They were also very focused on dinosaurs and extinction and prevention of future extinctions. There was a trail with the most recent extinctions with the Tasmanian Wolf (Thylacine) at the front which went extinct only 100 years ago. And all the way back to the megafauna and dinosaurs that roamed here. Seems to be a lot of focus on dinosaurs here in Australia. I love it! There was also some snakes and frogs and lizards. This here is the Northern Death Adder. The most deadly snake in the world. I hope we will never encounter any snake in the wild. I wouldn’t know the difference and would be scared!

Rainbow Bay and Snapper Rocks

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Even when we are sleeping in, we still manage to see and do lots of stuff. It was super cloudy this morning anyway, so we didn’t miss too much getting out at noon. We had brunch at Cafe Kirra (pancakes and smashed avo sourdough) and then walked to Rainbow Bay Lookout and over to Snapper Rocks. Two lookout points south of Kirra, where we are staying. When the sun came out, it was so warm and lovely today.

And the best part about today? We saw whales and dolphins! At first, we saw them breaching. I saw a really big one jumping and splashing. Mikael missed it but saw the splash. So wow! When we got to Rainbow Bay Lookout, we saw plenty of whales blowing water far out. Still super cool! Then we also saw dolphins breaching, I think three at most. I’ve missed seeing whales and dolphins, it’s been 9 years since my last year in California.

Rainbow Bay Lookout:

Whale blowing water!Dolphin (above the surfer). Unfortunately the best I could do as I only filmed and these are screenshots.

Snapper Rocks:

And yet another sunset picture of Gold Coast:

Winter Solstice 2024

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Yesterday was the shortest day of the year on this side of the equator. Back home, everyone was celebrating Midsummer, the longest day of the year. But down here, today was just like any other day. We decided to not celebrate Swedish Midsummer, even if there was celebrations in Gold Coast.

We only had one plan and that was to watch the latest sunrise of the year at 6:38. So we walked out to the pier below Kirra Hill. As usual, the sunrise was incredible!

For brunch we went to Haig’s again and had the smashed avo sourdough. I think we are eating avo’s almost every day here, they are just too good! The rest of the day was very calm, Mikael had a massage and I have spent a lot of time reading on the balcony. Even if it was 24C, it was windy and surprisingly chilly so even if I at first thought that I would want to be at the beach and in the ocean, that didn’t happen. Oh well, it is midwinter.

These pictures are from Mikael’s fancy Sony camera:

Review of “Silverstrupen” by Siri Pettersen

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Title: Silverstrupen (~Silver Throat)
Author: Siri Pettersen
Translator (Swedish): Ylva Kempe
Series: Vardari #2
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 425
Published: 2023 (translated 2024), B. Wahlströms
My Grade: 5 out of 5

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

Imagine having stolen the devil from those in power. Robbed them of their source of everlasting life. And started a war, so fuelled by fear and disdain, that you are forced to become what you are hunting.

Juva is scarred for life by the man she liberated. The devil himself, whose blood sustained the eternal lives of the vardari. Now, she is battling unintended consequences: a flood of wolf-sick, a wavering city council and vardari´s desperate feud for the last drops.

Consumed by grief and fury, she is forced to side with dark, fanatical forces. Juva is fighting for everything she holds dear, but soon finds herself on a knife’s edge when she realises that the scar from Gríf cuts far deeper than she had imagined…

  • Náklav’s foundation is cracking under a flood of wolf-sick.

  • Divine images miraculously reveal the true faces of evil.

  • The elite who ran the world are crawling out from the shadows.

  • A vardari awaiting death finds a reason to live.

  • A fanatical priest opens the doors Drukna

MY REVIEW

Haha, wow, no wonder I couldn’t remember too much about The Iron Wolf before starting this second instalment in Siri Pettersen’s second trilogy, Vardari. It was released 2021 in Swedish which, with my bad reading memory, equals like two decades. It was delayed for almost two years also.

Whenever I grade a book, I always do it with my gut. Sometimes I honestly think that I am not very good at reviewing books because of this. But at the same time, I also believe that the general feeling after reading a book tells you more than if you look at very specific things that might speak differently to different readers. For instance, I love Siri’s world building. For me to love a setting like this, it doesn’t have to be original (even though this definitely is with its Norse roots), it’s all about how it is presented. Sometimes, I get a bit annoyed when the author is trying too much to describe the world by putting new words and things in the story without even a small description of what it means. Some might like that, but I don’t overly much. Siri builds her worlds very detailed but doesn’t do it in an overcomplicated way. It just makes sense, even if it was a bit hard getting into the story again after such a long time waiting (and reading other types of fantasy in between).

The story progresses nicely, it’s hard to put the book down (like with the first one). Things are constantly happening and you always want to continue to find out where this is going. And the ending. I feel that I am repeating myself a little bit after my review of The Iron Wolf, but the ending here was so similar. Not story-wise, but feeling-wise. It was an ending. A really good ending. And on the second to last page, I wasn’t sure what the third book could possibly be about. But then came the last page. Yep, there will definitely be a third book and I am so excited for it to, first of all, be revealed, and secondly be released. Hopefully in 2025 according to her website. But I also totally respect the writing process. Writing is hard and takes time. But please, Siri, hurry up with the final piece in this trilogy 😊.

I think Siri Pettersen could write anything and I would read it as soon as it is released. She is definitely one of my favorite authors! Do I even need to print the grade out in words?

Yeah, FIVE out of five possible!

Kirra

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Four weeks down under has gone by so fast and we have made our first move. We left our tiny granny flat in Mermaid Waters this morning and took an Uber down to Kirra in Coolangatta, the most southern part of Gold Coast. It only took 30 min, but when we are standing on the beach here and watch the skyline, it looks so far away.

I got one last beach session in with Cici and Katja at Surfer’s and we all had lead legs for some reason. Might be the cold. It’s really cold right now in the mornings. The sunrise was incredible as usual and I’m not even sad to have alarms set at 4:45am when I get to start my day with 1,5h of beach volley practice while the sun is rising.

Mikael and I cleaned out the AirBnB and had the luxury of checking in at the next place as soon as we arrived. And what a place! We have a room in a two bedroom apartment on the top floor. We are staying here through a friend of a friend of a friend and she matched us up with another friend of hers that plays beach volleyball as well. But she doesn’t seem to come until the end of the month so we have this two story apartment to ourselves for a bit. We can see the ocean from both balconies and it is super cosy with ocean theme.

Bye granny flat!

We packed up and then went out to explore a bit. It is truly beautiful here. Much calmer, not as many and not as high skyscrapers and they are not as tight together. We had lunch at Haig St Cafe and Restaurant and wow, we are definitely going back. Everything on the menu looked incredible!

We walked past the beach volleyball nets, walked all the way down to New South Wales and then a quick shopping on the way back. Right in Coolangatta, there is a state line which means that we walked to NSW today. Pretty cool!

The public restrooms are really nice here! Our first koala! Central Gold Coast looks so far away. QLD and NSW boarder.

The sunset on the way back was amazing! We are a bit further east than the rest of the Gold Coast, so we saw the skyline being lit up by purple and the sun set behind the mountains. Even if the sun sets behind land, it still colors the sky amazingly!

More beach volleyball

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What an amazing day it has been! The weather has been flawless, 25C and basically no clouds. Winter’s not too bad, haha! It just started though, I am counting on it getting colder.

This morning started with my alarm going off at 5am. I was hunting sunrises! Me and a couple of girls were gonna do some drills on the beach while the sun rose. Unfortunately, the poles were down at Surfer’s so we had to go down to Kurrawa and actually missed when the sun rose above the horizon. I guess I will have to do this again sometime.

I had such an amazing feeling after this morning, the sun was so warm, I was hungry and read on the beach until Mikael joined up so we could go to Elk Espresso and have a really nice brunch.

After that, I went in the ocean for the first time since getting here, in my new swimsuit. It was incredible! Wow! Mikael definitely missed out.

At 3pm, the next beach session of the day started for me, but this time social 4s and 2s with Beach Volleyball Gold Coast and Mikael got a haircut. I only did 4s today. My foot is really swollen after a mysterious twisting a week ago. It looks really bad and now it has started to hurt even when I’m running in sand, previously it was only hurting when I was walking on flat ground. Oh well.

Dinner at home in front of the latest Star Wars series The Acolyte and now bed. Such a long but magical day! The sun makes you tired and so does two two hour beach sessions, haha!

Goodnight!

Burleigh Head National Park

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WOW! We have had the most amazing day down in Burleigh Heads today. We were told that Burleigh Head National Park was incredible and it sure was. We followed the Ocean View Track in the national park. There were beautiful beaches in the beginning at Tallebudgera Creek, and it was almost a jungle feeling inside and along the small walking path and then we walked along the ocean with amazing views over the ocean and northern parts of Gold Coast. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. The coolest thing we saw was a Kookaburra sitting on a branch overhanging the walkway. It was just sitting there while we took pictures and lots of people walked by. So cool! A group of people we met along the way just told us that there was a Kookaburra ahead of us. People are so friendly here and just tells you about these things to brighten other people’s days.

After the short “hike”, we sat by the ocean, watching the surfers down below and just soaked it all in until the sun set behind the buildings. We had sushi at Oi Izakaya, a small place in Burleigh that had amazing sushi!

Today, we have taken a ride on the local bus and it worked just as well as the tram. Practically locals, haha!