A weekend at the Gold Coast and Byron Bay.

The family and I drove down to the Gold Coast on Friday. The father is starting his job away on Monday, and we were going whale watching at the Gold Coast on Sunday (today) so we figured we might as well make a weekend out of it.

We had an apartment booked at Mermaid beach. As we left home early we got to Mermaid beach at around 10am on Friday. The place we were staying at was very close to the beach so we walked there after we had gotten all our bags out of the car. The weather was really nice, and since it was early on a Friday, and most people were at work, the beach was almost empty! Which was good because we had a lot of the beach to ourselves, but bad because I didn't get to see any hot half-naked guys!

I actually knew about the Gold Coast a Mermaid beach from when I was looking to study in Australia. I remember looking at a map before I applied to Griffith University, I was thinking about Bond University and I could see on the map that Mermaid Beach wasn't far away from it. I remember the name just because it has Mermaid in it.

In the afternoon/early evening we went into town and to Surfers Paradise. We didn't really go on the beach as it was quite late and chilly by the time we had stopped by all the shops and got there. But we went to this arcade thing there instead, Time Zone I think it was called.

On Saturday we all went down to Byron Bay (back to New South Wales!) to meet one of the mother's friends for lunch. Almost as soon as we crossed the border into NSW it started raining!

I wish it hadn't been raining as I could have stayed outside and enjoyed the sight of Byron Bay a bit more then, but at least I got some photos.

Did you know that the lighthouse at Byron Bay is the easternmost point of "mainland" Australia? I didn't get a very good photo of it as I wasn't told about it until after I'd taken some pictures, so I didn't zoom in on it, but it's in the picture, if you look closely you can see it in the background.

While we were in Byron Bay the whale watching people called and told us that Sunday's trip was cancelled. They were expecting the same weather as in NSW and 4meter swells. At least since it was the arrangers that cancelled  we get to re-book it for later.

I think this picture turned out quite good despite the clouds... or maybe because of them...

Gold Coast skyline on the was back to the apartment.

So instead of whale watching, this morning we went to a shopping centre, Harbour Town, in the morning before we made it back to Brisbane. I've actually been looking for some board shorts for a while and I found some perfect ones at the shopping centre!! But they were too small, and they didn't have a size bigger... So I wasn't too happy about that as there are hardly any places selling board shorts for women! Well, not the longer ones that I want anyway.

It's a shame we didn't get to go whale watching today, although when I saw the lightning and heard the thunder when I woke up, and later saw the sea, I don't really mind. At least we get to re-book it! It was also a bit nice to get home "early" and relax a little bit. And at least I got to see some places I've never seen before!