Wednesday 2/27/2008- Sunday 3/2/2008:
Day 199-203: Gold Coast, Australia
On Wednesday night, we flew out at 9pm to Gold Coast on Virgin Blue. What a hilariously disorganized airline…to say the least. While employees were all young, friendly and “fun,” they have absolutely no clue what was going on. One example, our gate changed about 6 times, but they didn’t know why the departure board was showing a different gate then what they were telling us…. Long story short, after an hour and a half delay, we left out of our original gate. Avis car rental ended up staying open ‘late’ for our 10:30pm arrival….where we got a double upgrade to our Holden station wagon.
The only Debbie downer, was when we did our ‘car inspection’ we found a huge dent in the back of the car… and the Avis folks had already taken off…so we took pics and video, hoping that our proof would be enough… after a few wrong turns, we ended up at our accommodations for the night, Pyramid Park. (We ended up finding out later that they had made a record of the unfortunate ‘dent,’ so we were in the clear)…
Our alarm clock was not necessary, as we realized at 6:00am that Pyramid Park may as well have been on the airport’s runway…. We headed out for rainbow bay and snapper rocks to see the Quicksilver & Roxy Pro. They waves were not big enough for the tournament (called a ‘layday’), but we still got to see lots of the pros practicing…including Dermot! Afterwards, we headed up the coast to Surfer’s Paradise, where the waves were hardly ‘paradise,’ but it was fun for Katie to be back on the Gold Coast! After Dermot had almost turned into a prune from so much surfing, we headed down the coast to Byron Bay to meet up with some of Katie’s old friends, The Holland’s.
Neil and Erica were kind enough to welcome us into their home, on Byron Bay Farmstay. The long story short is when Katie lived in Australia during spring 2000; she stayed at Byron Bay Farmstay. Neil and Erica, the farmstay owners, are also avid travelers and they talked about their next big trip: ‘drive across N. America.’ Katie instantly offered her parent’s home in New Jersey for their first few nights. Katie's parent's hospitality paid great dividends for Katie and Dermot as Neil and Erica treated us to food, drinks and great conversations our entire stay.
Neil helped Dermot find a great surf spot while we were there while Neil, Erica and Katie took a “lazy” beach walk. The Holland’s idea of a “lazy” beach walk was still a workout, a pleasant one at that. After surfing and walking, Katie and Dermot decided to pay a visit to Katie’s alma mater, Southern Cross University. Not much had changed and we just missed the annual Toga party that was held the night before. After touring the campus, we tried to hit up one of Katie, Sink and Marq’s favorite pubs, Maggie Maes, but unfortunately as one local put it, “we lost her”. The pub had just shut down last year. We headed back to the Farmstay, had lunch, took a 4WD tour of the farm (with its own version of Stonehenge) and then bid our farewells to the Holland’s.
By the end of our stay with the Holland’s we realized that they had become our role models. . . . We can only hope to get to see a fraction of the places they have seen and have as many great stories from those experiences.
Our next stop was the Clog Barn in Coffs Harbor. It was a little piece of Holland tucked into the Gold Coast. We set up our tent (Thanks Angus!) and then headed out to the Coffs Harbor yacht club for dinner. The bartender waiter refused to take a tip from us as we were on holidays and she thought our money was better spent elsewhere. After dinner, we decided to ‘rough it’ in our tent by popping open the laptop and watching the Bucket List (Thanks Bob!) before calling it a night.
The next morning we got up early and headed out to Diggers Beach, where Dermot unfortunately took many diggers and rode very few waves. We then continued down the coast and eventually stopped at another beach in Coffs Harbor where we managed to find a bakery called Barnett’s Bakery….where Katie instantly thought of her sister Tamie (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!), and how she used to work at a Bakery, getting up at 4:00am many mornings… While a family discount was not provided, the meat pies and pizza bread we had were delicious. Dermot once again tried to battle the waves without much luck. Katie enjoyed watching a wedding ceremony taking place on the beach.
After packing the car back up we made our way to the last stop of the trip: Seal Rocks. We made it into the campgrounds at around 10:00 p.m. and luckily someone was still at the gate to let us in. Normally they don’t let anyone in after 7:00 p.m. We checked into our cabin, attempted to watch Sicko and both managed to fall asleep before it ended.
The next morning we woke up early and looked for some more waves. Dermot had a little more success then the last day, but the water soon became crowded with local surfers who did not take kindly to tourists taking their waves, so he packed it in and called and end to his Surfin’ Safari.
We continued on down the coast and made some pit stops along the way. We had lunch in Newcastle (a town that kind of reminded us of Bethlehem, PA except it was on the coast). A two hour stop at a mall just North of Sydney was our last stop on the trip before we arrived at our home way from home the Sandy's & Matt's Abode. We returned the rental car and then headed out to dinner at a sheik pizza parlor called Otto in Woolloomooloo…..deeelish.
The Surfin’ Safari was certainly quicker than either one of us would have liked, but it was definitely a worthwhile trip.