Gold Coast

We’re heading to the Gold Coast, most famous for being home to Surfers Paradise. We’ve taken the Rolley’s advice and are staying at Broadbeach, slightly more sedate than its neighbour but our 7th floor apartment gives us a great view of all the high-rise buildings. You might think high-rise buildings would not be a very great view, but we’ve just spent the last few weeks ooo-ing and ahh-ing over rainforests, creeks, rivers and deserted beaches and it feels quite good to be back amongst the energy of a holiday destination like this. It doesn’t feel like we’re travelling here, more like we’re on a holiday and we’re referring to this as our holiday within a holiday.

There’s so much happening here that we take advantage of the advertised babysitters for a night out. The kids have had quite a few different babysitters in their time, but never one that’s come with her guitar and sat on the bed singing lullabies to them. Very cute. Harley’s dumbstruck and Ruby’s smirking into her pillow.

Starting our evening at the Versace hotel (where the contestants of I’m a Celebrity…hole up), we’re disappointed that it’s not plusher. I was expecting very dramatic furnishings and sumptuous bars but one bar had more of a dining room atmosphere and the other was in the reception area where you felt more like you should be drinking afternoon tea than cocktails. Our cab driver tells us that the hotel had applied for an upgrade to six stars but in fact got downgraded to four. Not sure if that’s true as the pool was gorgeous but it’s certainly nothing special apart from that. We hadn’t realised Surfers was quite so tacky until we got close up. Fast food is king here and huge neon-lit bars lie side by side with girlie bars called tasteful things like Bedroom. The only cool thing is that the police zoom around town on quad bikes. After a pit-stop at an Irish bar for a bit of live music, we manage to find one great little cocktail bar before heading back to relative calm of Broadbeach. A final drink before releasing the babysitter eludes us as everything is closed. It’s 11.30pm. I guess that’s the lure of Surfers.

A rainy next couple of days sees us driving out into the hinterlands. From our mountainous journey, you can apparently normally get a fantastic view over the whole area but it’s unfortunately so foggy that we can just about see the car in front of us. But the day looks up when we see a sign for Cedar Creek winery which has it’s very own glowworm cave. Double whammy! Kids get to sit still whilst we sample their wares and, in absence of a good riesling, we both love the sweet wine called 3 Entwined, an unusual blend of semillion, chardonnay and vedelho.

Out the back, the owners have spent AU$ 1.5 million building a fake cave and filling it with glowworms. We see a short film about the life cycle of the worm and get a tour by the keeper who has to go into the forest every morning and catch 2,000 insects for their lunch. I think if we sent Will out, he’d be able to attract that many in no time since he seems to still be getting eaten alive by mossies whilst the rest of us are bite free, for the first time in months.

We stumble upon a dairy where, after a heavy tasting session, we stock up on some farm-fresh cheese and the kids get their fill of ice-cream and then head off into the rain again in search of the tree-top walk - a swing bridge 15 meters off the ground followed by ladders up into the trees, 30 meters up. Harley did his usual trick and fell asleep in the car on the way there, which meant I had to stay with him (and saved me having to confront my fear of heights), but apparently Ruby showed no fear and was gazelle-like in her ladder climbing (have you ever seen a gazelle trying to climb a ladder…).

We discover there's an ice bar in town which is minus 10 degrees inside (despite it's name of Minus 5) and everything inside, including the glasses and the furniture, is made of ice. Despite our warm coats and two apirs of gloves, the kids have had enough after about 10 minutes and even dancing can't get them warmed up but Will and I are quite enjoying our first blast of cold in 5 months. We can't stay in there more than half an hour, but that's certainly enough as your fingers start to go numb after that, which means you have trouble holding your (ice) glass, and we can't have that, can we?

Natalie, a friend from home, is staying with relatives nearby so a girlie lunch is planned. As I head off to meet her at 12.30, Will says “see you later, about 2ish?”. He joins us in the bar at 5pm…and we return home together at 7.30 just in time to get the kids in bed before the babysitter comes again at 8pm, and head off out again! Probably not the best night to go to the casino, but my alcoholic haze does make me very cautious on the blackjack table, which is more than can be said for some people (cough, cough). My best move of the night was to find a guy (who happened to be called Randy - trust me) who had a huge stack of chips in front of him and play behind him, which essentially means that he gets to call the bets and I just pick up my winnings. Didn’t take too much brainpower, which was just as well as I didn’t have too much left by then.

I work off the calories and the thick head the next morning with a game of tennis where we discover that Harley is a natural and, with just a couple of minutes tuition, is hitting the balls over the net with relative ease. He’s definitely going to have Will’s sporting abilities. Lucky for Ruby that she got my brains.

Brisbane

Wotif.com have turned up a huge old colonial house (www.franklin-villa.com.au run by the fabulously named Forrister Jenot) built in 1800, situated south of the river (yes, I am prepared to go south of the river) in Highgate Hill and we even get a 4-poster bed and a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. It looked good on the website, but we didn’t quite appreciate how lucky we’d struck until we got there. The huge downstairs living area and outdoor pool are set up to be shared by everyone who rents one of the five bedrooms (a kind of high-class backpackers), but there’s no one else here except a guy who’s working at the nearby car show from 10am til 10pm for 10 days straight (and that was the only straight thing about him). Which means that once the kids are in bed, we can play snooker in the snooker room, use the internet or sit in the sitting room, cook in the huge kitchen or swim in the pool. We can even go up to the verandah and admire the view of Brisbane twinkling in the distance (not too much of a distance this time).

Making the most of our fab location, we head into town for a walk around the CBD, China Town (not really a town, more of a China Street) and drive into the trendy Fortitude Valley, all rounded off with a visit to Strike bar for a game of tenpin bowling. Sadly, despite constantly thrashing him on the Wii before we left, Will won this time. I can use my weak back as an excuse for not being able to get down low enough (and I’ll have to remember that excuse, you never know when it might come in handy).

Down at the South Bank (which looks scarily like London’s South Bank), apart from a lagoon (open air swimming pool, right next to the river, complete with sandy beach) and a gorgeous riverside walk, there’s an Andy Warhol exhibition on which I’m desperate to see. I drag Will in kicking and screaming but he’s soon as immersed in it as I am and the kids are even enjoying watching his 15 Minutes tv shows which are playing. It’s a great exhibition and made child—friendly by being able to do your own 15 seconds of film, have your photo “Andy Warholed” and stand in a room filled with silver pillow-shaped helium-filled balloons which you can bash around. A great way to spend the afternoon.

And what greater way to spend the evening than dinner with the rest of the Rolleys. Louie’s cooking and we finally get to meet her mum Helen, her sister Annabel with boyfriend Brendan and catch up with Jack and meet his girlfriend Sam. Poor Harley manages once again to be the target of an angry dog’s attention when Helen’s dog Rudy, a normally placid sausage dog, decides he doesn’t like him. Thankfully this dog was hustled away before he could bite!