Tag Archives: Gold Coast

Moon rising

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Two nights ago, I saw something I’ve never seen before. A red burning moon rising over the horizon. During social games in Surfers on Wednesday like normal, I had to stop during a game and ask my partner what that dim red thing was on the horizon, it looked like a big red boat, which was weird. She got super excited, almost jumped and screamed: “that’s the moon!!”. And yeah, it was the incredible moon rising and getting brighter by the second as it rose above the horizon. We had to take a time out and take lots of pictures of it. Holy shit! It was magical! It lost most of its red color the higher it got, but it was so beautiful. Apparently it’s not too uncommon here.

The pictures of me about to serve was taken by Shanon, the guy in charge of Volleyball in Paradise.

Coombabah Lake Conservation Park

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24 July

This was the best day in Australia yet! Coombabah Lake Conservation Park was incredible. Such beautiful nature and so much wildlife.

In summary, we saw 5 koalas, two of which I spotted myself (people here are very friendly of pointing out where things are), 5 kookaburras and endless of kangaroos.

Can you spot the koala in the canopies in the picture below? This was our very first one, only five min into the park.

Here is a zoomed in one:

Our first kangaroos (except the one I saw lurking in the high grass beside the M1 a few weeks back):

Kookaburra number one:

Koala number two (this one was harder to spot but we got help):

Koala number three (this one I spotted all by myself): Zoomed in through my binoculars:

This could have been northern Sweden:

And in the same park there is practically a jungle:

Koala number four (also spotted by me, but pretty hard to miss):

Three different kookaburras (the last one was so big it was floating out on the branch):

And koala number five (we got help with this one, super hard to see):

A super pregnant roo:

Here you can see the joey’s feet sticking out of the pouch:

And also the face sticking out ❤️ (I got this on video and it is probably the best video I have ever filmed):

SeaFire 2024

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First official day of winter is here! And what a day it has been. I had 16k steps before Mikael and my day even begun so to say that I’m tired would be an understatement.

Today, instead of Mikael being out early going for a run, he slept in while I spent the morning at the beach playing social beach volleyball with BVGC again. Stella from Wednesday was there again and we started strong together and kept going strong. It was so much fun! The morning started with no wind, no sun, but still like 20C. Optimal conditions. The wind took off a bit later, but wasn’t too bad. 3 hours later, and I was done! Got to talk a bit more with the locals, and apparently there is only social beach volley over here. No organized trainings or groups  for development. Like where are all the good teams? Apparently they all move to Europe to continue with their beach volleyball careers.

After a shower back at the granny flat, we took the tram up to Cavill Ave where we first had lunch at Pancakes in Paradise (savory mushroom and chicken crepe and sweet pancakes with syrup and chocolate fudge), then some shopping (Mikael got a pair of thongs and a sweater for $60, this years bikini models didn’t fit me at all either, so I will wait for my old ones to be sent down, haha) and then the big event of the evening: SeaFire!

SeaFire is a fireworks competition that I think goes yearly? Anyway, we had little expectations, just heard that there would be fireworks on 1st June. We were not disappointed! There were three firework displays, Italy first at 6pm, then UK at 7pm and Australia finale at 8pm. They all had choreography to music; Italy more towards local opera and such, UK to a little bit of everything and Australia movie music. Italy was good, some parts of UK was good and Australia was very relatable with Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and more. It was a great experience! And the displays were all non-comparably better than GP’s New Years firework in Gothenburg. Shot from boats out in the water and viewed from the beach with thousands of other people was magical! It was raining quite a bit, and we were super cold in the middle of it all, still soaked when we go back home, but it stopped before the final. Stella joined us too. She’s here on a WHV (working holiday visa) and will move on to Perth on Monday – we had a good couple of days together).

All in all, great day!

In short: yesterday we didn’t do much. We learned how Aussies recycle (everything recyclable in one bin, everything else in the other). And in general, it’s very clean here. Hardly any garbage on the street at all. No chewing gums, no trash, no nothing. Some shopping carts here and there (but that might be because we live close to a shopping center). The public restrooms are also very clean! Back home, I would hold it until I was back home, but here, no worries at all.

Videos from the display are on my Instagram, under highlights “Down under”. I should be able to upload videos here, but the wifi here is just too bad…

Surfer’s Paradise. Super touristy. Not for us. But now we’ve seen it!

Today’s adventure: Local tram

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We are still completely knocked out in the mornings. We set the alarm for 8am, but snooze through it and wake up at 10:30. But that’s not too bad. If we spent more time outside, walking and taking in new impressions, than these half days, I think we would be completely dead.

Even if we didn’t get out until like noon, we still managed to see a lot of things. On today’s agenda was to use the public transit here. There are several buses going around here and one tram, G:Link. It was super easy to buy a card at the station (we live by the end station in the south), they leave every ten minutes on average and stops at every stop. They were super clean and the cards were so easy to use. There are machines on every station, so you tap the card before you go on, and then when you get off again. Very convenient.

So we are living in Mermaid Waters and decided to go up to Main Beach and check it out. There is a scenic point called The Pit Gold Coast which didn’t look like it was too far. We gave up after going a third of the way from the tram station.

We live on the orange dot, took the tram all the way to the light green dot and walked to the dark green dot. That’s when we got tired and turned back.

Today’s realization: GOLD COAST IS BIG!

Much bigger than we thought. And it’s long. When we move onto our next place (Coolangatta) in three weeks, we will be one hour south of here, which is already kinda south in GC), even though it looks so close on the map. Insane!

We walked around in the Marina north of Main beach where huge yachts were stationed. We also saw that there are whale watching boats there. Humpback whales are migrating from Antartica now so we might just take one of those tours out one day.

Main Beach.

Southport, where we will stay our last three weeks.On the way back, we actually struggled to find a restaurant to eat at. We jumped off the tram at Surfer’s Paradise, but all the restaurants seemed to be at the stop before: Cavill Avenue. So we went to Broadbeach and had dinner at a bar, The Lukcy Squire, by the shopping mall The Oasis. The Philly Steak Sandwich was actually really good. And even if it was simple, it ended up costing 35 AUD per person with one soda as well. It’s expensive here.

Beach volleyball

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We slept much better last night, but were still super tired when we woke up and didn’t leave bed until like 10:30. Started the day with a little bit of shopping since I’m missing sport bras for instance. Found one at LSKB, another brand I’ve never seen before, there are lots of new stores around here, and got to use it for my first beach volleyball session later. We also got some food at Woolworths.

Beach Volleyball Gold Coast had social games today at 3:30pm and I was a bit nervous about the wind. Even if it was strong, it was consistent and I tried to use it as best as I could which actually felt really good, up until the point where I got a set from a player I didn’t know and didn’t time it at all. My reception was surprisingly good, and most of the setting. We also played 4vs4 and mixed which also confused me a lot, haha. But it was so much fun playing again (even if it was only a week ago I played back home) and the sand at the beach was so fine! I could get used to this.

We had dinner at a pub nearby and then walked back home through the more central parts of Broadbeach.

Chicken and mushroom pie with coleslaw and chips.

First day in Mermaid Waters

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First day in Gold Coast. Last night, we were so tired and went to bed at 8pm. Set the alarms for 8am. I woke up at 6 and just couldn’t go back to sleep and finished The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson, the third and last Mistborn book (review can be found here, this is still a travel and book blog 🤓) – WOW! Mikael didn’t wake up at 8, but that was fine since I wasn’t done with the book just yet. At 10, he started to move a little and at noon we were ready to walk 5 minutes to Pacific Fair, the big shopping mall. On today’s agenda was buying food and sunscreen, which is a bit of a jungle. It’s important to buy the right one due to chemicals and stuff. Good thing it’s cheaper here than in Sweden, but the good ones are as expensive, if not more so. Shopping at Woolworths was fun, but surprisingly similar to a Swedish store. I was prepared for something completely different, like in the US. I remember loving going grocery shopping there because it was so different. I guess it was different here as well, obviously, but not as much. There were many things we recognized, but also so many more options of everything. It took us a while to go through a fraction of it, haha.

Our next stop was the beach. We’ve been here three days now and I haven’t seen the beach. It took us maybe 20 min to walk to the beach and got there just in time for the sun to set behind the skyscrapers. It was not cold with full pants and a thin cardigan, but it wasn’t warm either. Even if it is around 20C, it’s not really warm. When it’s 20 back home, it is warm. Definitely different climates.

The beach is huge! It’s super wide and as long as you can see! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a beach this big, haha! And the sand was squeaky, hilarious. I wonder how that affects playing beach volleyball.

The waves were pretty high, and there was only one place on the beach where you could go swimming, right in front of a lifeguard tower. There was a detailed sign about today’s conditions. The water was 23C while it was only 19C on land.

Second day in Brisbane

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Our second day down under has come to an end. We have now checked in at our cozy granny flat in Mermaid Waters (Gold Coast) and will stay here for the next four weeks. I so look forward to not living in our suitcases, have a look at what we got in them and buy whatever we need.

It was raining when we woke up today. When we checked out at 10am, we weren’t really in the mood to go out, but the drizzle wasn’t too bad, and our sense of adventure got the better of us. We put the bags in the hotel and went on a walkabout. Even if it was grey and a bi of drizzle, it wasn’t so bad. 19C and the rain was barely noticable. It got warm as soon as we walked, but a bit chilly when we sat down. It’s very comfortable. But colder than in Sweden right now apparently, haha!

We walked across Story Bridge and through Kangaroo Point and along the Brisbane River to Southbank. We had a coffee at The Jetty, walked around, hid from swooping birds (no, we didn’t, it’s not swooping season yet, but Mikael had a small bird almost flying into his head honestly), saw the man-made beach Streets Beach, were super tourist-y by the BRISBANE sign, watched the Wheel of Brisbane (a copy of Lisebergshjulet) and spent some time inside the Queensland Museum.

The Queensland Museum was free and we watched both of their current exhibitions; Insect Agency and Dinosaurs Unearthed: Explore Prehistoric Queensland. Did you know that there are 1,25 million insects to every human on Earth? Or that Australia imported beetles 50 years ago to deal with a huge pasture poo problem? Or that three quarters of all of Australia’s 450 species of butterflies live in Qld? I really enjoyed that exhibition on insects. Mikael got really tired (and doesn’t like bugs for some reasons, something new I learned about him after more than four years) and we didn’t spend as much time as I wanted in the dinosaur exhibition. It was so interesting. The magafauna of Australia, wow! Supercool!

Mikael skipped lunch because he had troubles with his stomach after last night’s pasta. But I got hungry so we went to a sushi place in Queen Street. In Australia, you get a sushi roll whole, and eat it like it is. So weird. But it was soooo good! Also, the soy was packaged in small fish bottles. Very cute!

We walked back to the hotel, ordered an uber and Mikael fell asleep in the car down to Mermaid Waters. Since we arrived, we have had a lovely video call with his dad and wife and will now go to bed, at 8pm 😊 We are exhausted to say the least. 18k steps yesterday, 15k steps today. 33h of traveling the day before and lots of emotions.