Surfers Paradise

The night before we left Brisbane, I had gone out for a few beers. I ended up returning to the caravan park at 7am. We left at 9am, and I had gotten an hour sleep. Christy woke me up and I was still quite drunk. Not a good start to a road trip.

Luckily, I slept for literally the whole trip down to Surfers Paradise. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the Q1 building. The whole place was full of skyscrapers, but he Q1 building is the tallest in Australia so stood out a bit more. My first impression of the place was that, even though the buildings were big, the streets were small. It was a very tight little town. We drove around a bit to get our bearings, and got separated as usual, and found each other again and then went to look for a caravan park. We found a nice little spot near to the water and checked in. We got a spot together, and funnily enough, right beside the german backpackers that we were beside in the Brisbane caravan park! We seem to keep meeting people again the further south we go.

We went exploring, once we checked in. The town itself was within walking distance, and was pretty small. The beach was really nice, as was the esplanade and beach front. Even though it seemed like a nice, affluent place, I still got the feeling that it was quite tacky. My sister describes it as "Ballymun in the sun", which is how she also describes the Canary Islands and Spains holiday resorts. I think its quite accurate.

After our first night there, the heavens opened and it rained for our remaining 2 days, with the exception of the time it took us to walk outside, get a taxi, and get to the nearest pub for the organised pub crawl we signed up for. As soon as we got indoors....rain again. Very heavy rain! Luckily it didn't last long, as the walks in between pubs would have been very unpleasant.

The pub crawl itself was nothing special. It was basically what it said on the tin. The organisers basically just brough us to about 5 or 6 different bars, and left us alone to ourselves, with the exception of one party game, which was pretty crap actually. Nothing like the old party games back in Scraggs Alley in Carlow during Rag Week!

So, after a few days in Surfers Paradise, after having not seen a single surfer the whole time I was there, we departed. I suppose its one of those places you have to see once. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to all the hype. Admittedly, all the hype coming from its name! :p

Nimbin, here we come...