Day 244 - Tuesday 29 August - Golf and the Gold Coast Strip

Day 244

Tuesday

29 August 2017 –

Bonogin – Mudgeeraba – Currumbin – Burleigh Heads – Surfers Paradise

After a slightly later evening, I didn’t wake until 7am with Paul stirring a little after. We both read our books, before I decided it was time to get out at 8.15am. After having a shower and breakfast, we gathered our things and took off for the Boomerang Farm Golf Course in Mudgeeraba.

The course was on a farm with a rustic style club house. Once Paul had paid for his 9 holes, we jumped onto the course and began our morning stroll. The course was very open, with the holes crossing over each other. It was a little confusing trying to work out where you were hitting to and then walking between holes. The greens had also been recently cored and sanded so putting was somewhat hit and miss. Paul’s round reflected the poor condition and he wasn’t happy with his result, when we finally finished, but it was still a lovely morning spent in the sun.

We returned to the van just as the hay truck arrived to drop off the feed for the horses. We chatted to Scott who was getting busy around the house and yard. We packed up our lunch, said goodbye and then took off for Currumbin. We found a quiet park along the Currumbin Creek where we could have lunch looking out over the water and watch the Stand Up Paddle boarders drift by.

I checked out the pelican sculptures lovingly wrapped in scarves and beanies before we drove a little further around the creek to Currumbin Beach where we parked and took off for a walk.  We made it to Elephant Rock where the morning shows often broadcast on ANZAC Day. We climbed the hill to the lookout on the top to check out the view and then we made our way back passing the bronze statue of the female bather.

We continued our journey on to Burleigh Heads where we parked again and followed the path into the national park. We opted to stay at the base of the headland and follow it around for the 1.2km. Above us a young girl was standing on a rock, arms out stretched like in the Titanic.

At one stage I stopped to take a photo only to have my sunglasses take a dive so I had to duck under the fence on the sandy slope, hope I wouldn’t slip, retrieve the sunnies and scoot back under the fence. Thankfully I managed.

We returned to the car via the roadside and then continued further north to Surfers Paradise. We parked in a multi storey and then got out amongst the high-rise buildings. We navigated to the beach side and walked along the strip checking out the people on the beach and the art that was around. You could see that this was most definitely tourist central.

We wandered about, completing a loop before heading towards the Q1 building and its sky deck. With our Dreamworld ticket we also received entry to the 77^th floor viewing area. After flashing our passes, we entered the lift lobby before taking the very fast lift to near the top floor. When the door opened, we were inundated with Chinese tourists pushing their way into the box we were tyring to get out of, as you can imagine Paul was super impressed and let them know it.

Once out on the floor, we moved about taking in the views of the Gold Coast from the large glass windows. It certainly provided a terrific perspective of the metropolis from this point.  We stopped at the café for a drink before completing our 360° panorama view where we could make out the Robina shops and roughly where Bonogin was. Paul even suspected he saw a Bull shark cruising in the canals.

After making it all the way around, we returned to the ground floor and made our way back to the car. We struggled to find the pay machine, walking around in circles until we found it and then we joined the traffic making their way home for 4.45pm.

We chatted to Scott in between his horsey chores and then Kirsty came home and we stood around chatting again as it got cold and dark and she worked on her stallion Leuwin who is suffering with arthritis and a hoof abscess. We decided to have a quite evening retreating to our own quarters for dinner. I then went through the photos and computer bits before finally thinking about getting to bed.