No surfing for us in Paradise

Wednesday 7th February

Hello again. Apologies to those of you who have complained about my laziness with the blog, but we have been having some ‘quality’ family time. And you may have noticed that I got my days and dates mixed up over the past few entries. That speaks volumes about how we’ve completely lost track of time and relaxed.

The past few days have been good fun with the kids – we’ve taken them to school and picked them up each day. On Monday, we just chilled out around the house, and on the decks – which was lovely – the weather has been great, hot and sunny with occasional welcome cloud, but the sun even beats through that. Carole and Dan have an ‘above ground’ pool which is great to cool down in and you can swim about ten strokes or go round and round.

Yesterday, Dan (who has this week off work), Sid and I went to North Burleigh, a nice beach resort about 15 minutes drive away, where we had a walk along the beach and a nice lunch. In the evening Sid and Dan bar-b-q’d on the deck, and later Jake and I watched School of Rock dvd which he had been dying to show me!

The beaches here are stunning. Miles and miles of fine white sand and beautiful blue seas. So today, we went to Surfers’ Paradise, the most famous Gold Coast resort, which I had been warned is a bit tacky. Well, we thought it was really nice. Yes, masses of high rise seafront apartment buildings (including Q1 – the tallest residential building in the Southern hemisphere), but nice shops and beautiful beaches with the warmest water you can imagine, to play in.


Carole finished work early and so we were back on the beach (at South Burleigh) again early this evening, playing beach cricket (naturally, the girls won) before having . . . fish and chips on the beach, followed by massive ice creams. Another feature of the beaches here is that about every 100 metres there are bar-b-q areas (with free electric bar-b-qs), with picnic tables and chairs, so it’s all very civilised. In fact, the whole lifestyle is exactly like auditioning for an episode of Neighbours or Home and Away. We’re just sitting on the deck now, with a drink, planning another weekend away, probably a bit north of the Brisbane area. More on that when decision made.