And so Max awoke, 9 years old and 155cm (5 foot 1) tall with much excitement. This was dampened a little a it was a pack up morning, but as we had promised to spend the afternoon celebrating, he wasn’t too disappointed.
Our first need was to remove ourselves from New South Wales. We decided the appropriate manner was to travel through Tweed Heads into Coolangatta before heading inland. By the time we made it into Queensland we had pretty much made up our minds as to where we were going to camp, so headed up to the lucky town of Canungra. By just after lunch we were all set up and ready to party (in a nine year old sort of way). We had given Max the opportunity to decide what he would like to do and he had plumped for an afternoon at the movies followed by dinner. A quick scour of the GPS found movie theatres at Nerang, which is basically the next town so off we went.
On arriving the choice came down to Cars 2 or Kung Fu Panda 2 and Max decided on Cars (based around the fact that he had seen the original Cars, although couldn’t remember it, while had never been interested in the first Kung Fu Panda). Before the movie started Max and I went for a walk to see what was available for tea afterwards. We found Tandoori, Thai, Wood-fired Pizza, Sushi and several other options all in close proximity so Max decided on…………….. Fish & Chips.
The movie was better than I was expecting and much better than Max was expecting (as we found out both during and after). The fish and chips were also a winner and he decided it was one of his best birthdays which is fantastic given it is the only one he has spent with just his immediate family. To finish the night off we headed up into the Lamington National Park, to the Natural Bridge to hunt for glow worms. This was a magical walk, although I think Liz found it a little challenging in the dark. As it turned out it is a very well visited place with around 300 people trekking through every night. luckily for us we arrived before any of the tourist coaches so were able to have it pretty much all too ourselves.
Next day we designated a rest day, with the kids getting to explore the Canungra Showgrounds, complete with rodeo arena and river winding its way around much of the perimeter.
Today we well and truly made up for it. Firstly we headed up to Tamborine Mountain, which turned out to be a community of around 6,500 people. From what we could see it predominantly revolved around tourism and the floods at the start of the year hit them pretty hard with a surprising number of properties on the market. This followed on from stories we had read in the local Gold Coast papers talking about the high unemployment in the region and the correspondingly high level of crime.
Tamborine Mountain itself was well worth the visit, before we headed back down towards the Gold Coast itself. I must admit we weren’t really expecting a lot out of this part of the day but thought we should at least drive through. In the end it met our expectations, with the countryside we had passed through and our (certainly mine and Max’s anyway) preference for smaller places meaning that it didn’t really provide any sort of ‘must stop’ incentive, except for the fact that we were there at lunch time and so found a nice waterside park to eat lunch in. Once we had finished tooling along the coastline we headed back inland to O’Reilly’s, to visit Australia’s first tree-top walk. This involved 30 odd k’s of winding roads up the mountains which is currently vying for my favourite drive of the trip, before we reached our destination. The walk was lovely and it really rounded off the day beautifully. It also delivered a fantastic counter-point to the Gold Coast experience, with O’Reilly’s much more likely to become a future holiday destination than the coastal strip at this point in time.
All in all we have really enjoyed staying in Canungra and the surrounding areas (Nerang through to the Lamington National Park) have been beautiful and could easily be lived in, however jobs and industry do seem to be an issue. The fact that I recently set the GPS to minor roads and shortest distance rather than quickest time also seems to have improved the roads it takes us down. Previously I was diverting down interesting looking roads with it swearing at us, now it is taking us down the interesting looking roads all of its own accord!
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