The Gold Coast Sun
Driving the Great Barrier Reef from Gold Coast to Cairns
From Bangkok, we took a flight to Gold Coast. It included a 7 hour layover in Singapore Airport and then an overnight flight, so we arrived jetlagged early the next morning.
The first couple days involved a lot of sleeping but we were excited to start our next Australian road trip. Our drive last year from Melbourne to Adelaide was really enjoyable, so we were looking forward to a similar experience. The plan was to spend three weeks driving north along the Great Pacific Highway from Gold Coast up to Cairns, from where we would fly to Tokyo; however, on our first day we drove a short distance south to see Natural Bridge, one of the Gold Coast’s most photographed falls. There’s an easy walking trail through the jungle and we soon found out how hot Australia can get: it was near 40 degrees C and as humid as any tropical place we’ve visited.
The waterfall carved out a hole in a rock formation and a subsequent cave below, in a weaker sedimentary layer. It was cool to be out hiking since we couldn’t remember the last time we’d gone hiking. The cave and waterfall weren’t really that extraordinary though; the HDR photos of the waterfall on the signboards were much better than what we could capture, since the cave was so dark.
The Natural Bridge waterfall is in Springbrook National Park and is spread over a large area including several other waterfalls, walking trails, and viewpoints. We took in the most popular ones like The Best of All Lookouts and Twin Waterfalls, which might be better categorized as “a typical view from up high” and “a waterfall with a dribble on the side” respectively. The main attraction of the latter, however, was swimming. There were several people swimming in the bottom but the brown water didn’t look too inviting so we moved on.
Gold Coast is perhaps best known for its coastline, which stretches on forever. The entire city seems to be dug out of a vast plain to surround neighbourhoods with water so that each backyard has a dock, not unlike Florida. This also gives the benefit of making a lot of inland beach areas, where the water is calm and tucked away from the surf on the coast.
The swimming was pretty good but cooler than we expected, which contrasted the burning heat from the sun nicely. Though not the best beach, it was nonetheless fun to spend an afternoon on the sand and we figured that there would be plenty more beaches to explore the drive up to Carins.
