Down Under '09 : Final Chapter

Tourism Capital of Australia : The Gold Coast

27 January 2009 

Asrul introduced Marina, his colleague at UTHM to me. She reminds me of Sariati, my so called pet sister during my old days in Brisbane. It was so generous of her to let us stay at her place on the Gold Coast. We clicked right away and she was happy (well, I thought she was) to be our driver for the 2 days we were there. 

Any visit to Australia will not be complete without a close encounter with Australia’s most famous icons. I am talking about the koalas and kangaroos.  Poor Asrul, has never seen these animals since he got here 8 months ago. Sam was eager to see them too, though he has been to Lone Pine Sanctuary where I took him in 2000. So instead of going straight to Byron Bay, we stop at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. This was the place where I first saw koalas when I joined the QUT excursion during the orientation week in February 1999. We had so much fun feeding the kangaroos, teasing the ever sleepy koalas and simply enjoying the park. 

From Currumbin, we headed south to Byron Bay. 

28 January 2009 

The Gold Coast has a lot of attractions besides its renowned beaches. It has many theme parks, world class marinas, great shopping and the many national parks at of Mount Tambourine are worth checking. In fact this Tourism Capital of Australia has everything to suit everyone taste. Since we only had one day, and this was not the first time we were there, we would not have time to do everything or perhaps anything.  It is good that we all have something in common, so we did not have problem deciding what to do. It goes without saying, shopping will make everybody happy. Surfers Paradise or shall I say Shoppers Paradise, is a good place to hunt for souvenirs and designer items. It has rows and rows of shopping streets and arcades targeting the visiting tourists. You know who bought the most souvenirs? Not me. From Surfers, we continued our shopping pilgrimage to Harbour Town Outlet Mall at Southport where we spent our last AUDsssssss.

I had a chance meeting up with my ex classmate, Bernie. It was great, considering we have not seen each other since uni, and I have lost contact with most of my classmates.  We had a lot to catch up over lunch as Bernie has lawn bowl match to attend in the evening.

The remaining of the day was spent at Broadwaters Marina for some photos and enjoying sunset at the Spit.

Asrul prepared a sumptuous Nasi Lemak for our farewell dinner. It was great, as we don’t have any more AUD to dine at a proper restaurant and he was planning to cook from the beginning anyway.

We close our trip down under at Bedroom club. It is the top club in Surfers Paradise. We were joined by Bernie and we had fun looking at him dancing like a wooden puppet. But we had a great night and a memorable one.

29 January 2009

We woke up today with diarrhoea. It must be because of what we consumed last night. The sumptuous Sambal. It affected everybody even the cook himself. After taking turn for toilet visits, we realised that we were running late. We rushed to the airport and just make it on time before they closed the check in counter. This trip to Australia will always be remembered for so many reasons. The places were so familiar and close to my heart. Will I come back to its shore? You try to stop me.