Joyce and Paul's retirement travels

What a wonderful place we picked for a time of relaxation. The resort was perfect. Having an end suite, meant we had 4 sliding doors in our living/dining area and another two in our bedroom. It also allowed for lots of cross ventilation in the suite. We rarely turned on the AC since it was always windy.

We did have some rain on Sunday, the day after we arrived. However, we needed a break from driving and had laundry to do as well. It was nice to have laundry for free right in our suite. We also had to pick up more groceries. I planned on doing a bit more food prep since we had a full kitchen to work in.

On Tuesday we headed out on a day trip to Mt. Tamborine. We had some pretty significant steep roads to traverse on our way up. Once we got to the top, we had an amazing view.

We could see for a long way once we reached the top.

We made a quick stop on the edge of town and then headed for a short nature walk along Cedar Creek.

We started the walk along the top of a gorge. We could see a number of pools down in the river below.

It was a good trail. The first half was paved and wheelchair accessible.

The trail gradually took us down to the level of the river where a number of people were enjoying the water.

There were some nice still pools of water for some people to enjoy. We hadn’t brought our bathing suits along for the day so we just enjoyed the walk and then stopped at the picnic area on the way back to eat our lunch.

We saw this wallaby when we headed back to the car.

After a drive through town, we determined there really wasn’t much to see in town. We thought it would be a larger tourist town, full of little shops, but mostly it was just eating establishments or distilleries/wineries.

We did make a stop before we came down the mountain at a sky walk. There were some sections in the rain forest that were 50m off the ground. I stayed in the car while Paul made the circuit since I don’t do heights very well!

This is an Eastern Water Dragon Paul saw. Although it spends much of its time lazing on rocks, logs and tree branches overhanging or alongside creeks and rivers, it will dive into the water at the first sign of danger. It is a good tree climber and a powerful swimmer. It can grow up to 1 m long.

On Wednesday morning, Paul woke very early and saw it was beginning to get light out. He was able to capture some gorgeous sunrise pictures – a sight we don’t often see since neither of us are early risers generally.

Wednesday, we also made the decision to extend our stay an extra day. We were fortunate they were able to accommodate us. We went down to the pool and hot tub most evenings but did attempt a swim in the ocean on Wednesday. However, although we got wet, we ended up falling down in the water because the waves were so strong. We ended up going over to the pool instead.

Thursday we both got haircuts since it be another 6 weeks until we arrive home. We refreshed all our laundry and packed our bags so we were ready to head out Friday morning. There was rain that moved through on Thursday night, but Friday morning it was done as we started our way south towards Sydney. We have one more area of sightseeing left – the Blue Mountains, just west of Sydney. We have a couple of days of driving to get there.

Our next few days of driving were uneventful. The weather was good and it got warmer as we went further north.

We had this interesting bridge to cross, built in 1867! Definitely narrow – not for large vehicles.

We watched for places to stop in smaller towns; sometimes for toilet stops, other times for a lunch break.

The parks were so nice – lots of green space, walking paths…

On Wednesday, I booked us accommodation in the town of Moree. It is known for its artesian thermals. The place we booked was a caravan park with a lot of cabins and motel rooms. We ended up in a brand new cabin and stayed 2 nights. It was good to relax and I had to plan the next couple of weeks of accommodations and routes. They had thermal pools right on site – 5 pools ranging from a lap pool at 32 degrees C to 4 smaller ones between 34 and 40 degrees C. The pools were just for their guests, not the general public and were not busy at all!

The lap pool had partial covering for sun.

We enjoyed two nights of time in the pools. Our timing was perfect since the upcoming weekend was fully booked with a football tournament in town.

Friday we saw more crops in the fields. We had been seeing something that had been cut off about a foot from the ground. It was dried like corn but still had thick leafy growth, not like a grain would. We finally saw the rest of the plant waiting to be harvested.

This is sorghum, used
primarily for livestock feed (cattle, pigs, poultry), ethanol production, and as a gluten-free human food staple.

We also saw some beautiful artwork on silos in Yelarbon.

On Saturday we had some definite landscape changes. We left the open farmland and had some hills and trees again.

We had to come through this range to get to the coast.

Can you find it? A Blue-faced Honeyeater at the toilet stop at Boonah. It is a very pretty bird.

We finally made it to our destination just after lunch on Saturday. We had adjusted our route and landed on the coast just south of Brisbane instead of heading north to Sunshine Coast. When I was looking for accommodation in the area, the weather at Sunshine was showing a week with rain most days. I knew it could certainly change as we got closer (and it did) but we decided with the heat and humidity, maybe staying just a bit further south might be good.

Researching somewhere to stay for more than a night or two was hard and we had to hope the pictures and reviews were right. We were so happy when we got to our location on the Gold Coast.

No shortage of windows/doors at The Rocks Resort

We’re going to relax in our beautiful surroundings the next days but also do a bit of day tripping to see a bit of the area. Hopefully I can keep caught up with the blog.

Author: Joyce and Paul's retirement travels

A beautiful time on the coast!

And north we go….