Brisbane to Melbourne

Hi everyone!
Sorry, it's been a while since we've had internet! We finished our drive down the coast, and are now in Melbourne. We head back to Sydney tomorrow, and then we are off to Ayer's Rock on Tuesday morning.

So... last time I posted, we were in Brisbane, which was fun and pretty low-key. We went to a terrible "koala sanctuary" that was actually more like a really depressing zoo. I've tried to forget it, so just stay away from Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary if you are in Brisbane. Other than that, a nice city. So after Brisbane we headed down to Surfer's Paradise, which is hard to describe. The best thing I can compare it to is probably Waikiki, a pretty beach surrounded by giant buildings.



They call it the Las Vegas of Australia, which isn't quite true. Regardless, it's fun, lots of bars and stuff to do. It's super-touristy, with wonderful gimmicky bars like "Five Below." So Five Below is a bar made of ice. The decorations are ice, the glasses are ice, the chairs and tables are ice. Luckily, your cover includes jackets, gloves, and Ugg boots.




The real reason we went to Surfer's Paradise is that the Gold Coast is famous for its "American-style" theme parks. We opted for Warner Brothers' Movie World and SeaWorld.

WB is like a hokey Disneyland. A lot of it was more Six Flags-ish, but they had some theme rides (the Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster) that were pretty hilarious. The Superman coaster is in the background here, and was actually a lot of fun. (My back is fine.)

There were some strange non-WB things (like Star Wars music? Are they even allowed to play that? Won't Disney get mad?) including Austin Powers and Shrek stuff. They're no Mickey ears, but these Shrek ears were pretty great.



SeaWorld was an interesting combination of things: they still had the requisite dolphin and seal shows and a pretty solid shark aquarium, but they also had legitimate rides, like roller coasters. Weird. My favorite was the Bermuda Triangle themed ride:



Volcanoes? In the Bermuda Triange? Yeah, that's what we said, too. The plot line of the ride was really involved and ridiculous, and it was something about how these volcanoes had popped up, and we had to go in and investigate, and then it turned out that there were aliens who had caused the volcanoes to appear. Yeah. The highlight was when one of the Coasties who had "briefed you" on your mission asked another "wait, how do you know so much about these aliens?" and she gets all menacing and says "Because I am one!" Yes, this is what the theme parks are all about. We had a blast.

The best ride we did in Surfer's Paradise was actually the "Vomitron" which was one of those carnival rides (like in the city) that you just pay for at the time. We went twice (after tapas and sangria, ugh). It was great, unfortunately we didn't take any pictures, so Jon drew this for me (guest art!).



You go backwards for a while, then forwards for a while. There are two seats on either end, and they are free-swinging, so they move as the thing rotates. It's fun.

So after three days in Surfer's Paradise, we finally left Queensland (entered New South Wales) and stayed in Byron Bay for a night. We had heard it's very hippy-ish, which we didn't really notice. It was cute, and there was great food. We went to a pizza place and they wrapped up our leftover slices in foil for us in the shape of a swan.


Yes, these are the important things that I know you all want to hear about. Okay, so after Byron we finally got down to Sydney. We stayed with Jenny's friend Ryan, and it was great to hang out with friends. We were only there for a night, then we had to part with the Yaris (sad) and flew down to Melbourne.

Melbourne is cool, very artsy, lots of good cafes and stuff. The highlight has definitely been wine tasting in the Yarra Valley. We met up with some guys that we met in Cairns-- I actually certified them as divers-- and they took us wine tasting. We actually went drinking the night before at a bar called the Traders Bar. Kind of a fun gimmick: the drink prices all work like stocks, so you can look up on the screen and see that Tasmanian beer is down, but American beer is up, so you buy the Tazzie beer. The differences are only like 50 cents up or down, but it's fun. So the next day, we were all very hung over, but still decided to go. These boys are crazy, on the drive out we actually got beers to help our hang overs. (Obviously Shannon, who was driving, didn't drink, and apparently it's legal to drink in cars in Australia. Who knew?) The wine country was very pretty, the wine was very good, the food was even better.


We also went to the zoo, which was pretty good. I'm getting tired of writing so I don't know, it was a zoo, and a good one. I thought this picture was kind of fun.


The orangutans were cute, we saw more cassowaries (numbers 6 and 7 for us), the elephants were big, the platypus was ridiculous (did you know that a platypus enclosure is called a platypusary?), the big cats were pretty active, which was cool. Okay, I'm getting boring, so, in closing... wombats!