Gold Coast

The last day of my vacation in Australia, we went to the Gold Coast. It was Schoolies week, which is pretty much what we called Beach Week growing up, except for the whole country, not just for the kids from DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Basically, any 18 year old who had just graduated high school was on the beach at the Gold Coast. And they can legally drink! And they were sunburnt!

This is the Gold Coast. Michael noted that mostly, we saw girls on the beach. I think the boys were still sleeping off the hangovers, or, watching weird sports like cricket and drinking more beer.

Note the high rises. I did not really find this to be an attractive beach.

Me at Surfer's Paradise. The orange signs are all for Schoolies... they say stuff like "be safe, watch your mates."

Phillip Island

I didn't stay in Brisbane the whole time I was in Australia, I also got to go visit the delightful Paisley! She lives outside of Melbourne. I wanted to go see little penguins, so off we went to Phillip Island.

We had a lovely lunch of fish and chips, and we were joined by a flock of seagulls. One even was bold enough to swoop down and steal a chip out of Paisley's hand! After we finished, she was wrapping up our leftovers and the whole flock descended on the table, tearing apart the paper.

We went to a koala sanctuary (see: family of koalas pictured above), a chocolate factory, took a walk along the beach, and, oh yes, saw little penguins. I wasn't allowed to take photos as the flash damages their eyes, but rest assured, they are adorable. They are only 30 cm tall and navy blue instead of black. I love them.

Click here for more Phillip Island photos.

Brisbane

Most of the time I was in Australia, I was in Brisbane. I was visiting my friend Michael, and that's where he lives now. (Well, if you know Brisbane, he actually lives in New Farm.)

Queensland is called the Sunshine State and it was quite warm. Brisbane is also sometimes called Brizvegas, which you can see in this sign. The sign was outside of the Contemporary Art Museum, which was a lovely, lovely building with not a lot of art inside.

Brisbane is a pretty small city. I feel like I saw everything I wanted to see within two days. But, I did get to go to a Ben Lee concert there! He was playing with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra which was very cool. Michael didn't want to go, but he even told me at the end it "wasn't awful" and while he's not a Ben Lee fan now, he's also not a Ben Lee hater anymore. That's a start, I guess.

Want more pictures of Brisbane? (There aren't many, to be honest!) Go here.

Australia!

OK, let's get this bit out of the way. I loved Australia. I mean, can I move please?

This first group of photos is from Australia Zoo. Australia Zoo is Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter)'s zoo. Despite the total cheese on the website, and whatever you may think of Bindi, I liked this zoo. Ok, yeah, pictured above is me with a statue of the Irwins, which is pretty silly, I admit. And overall, the zoo is on the smaller side as far as worldwide zoos I have visited go. But I got to pet a kangaroo! And a koala!

Click here if you want to see more zoo photos, including me petting the kangaroo and koala.