van wyk journeys October 5th – Brisbane, Mt Tamborine, the Glow Worm Caves, and the Gold Coast
Today we are moored in Brisbane way out in an industrial port area that is complete with at least 2 refineries and a variety of other industrial businesses (ie: Grain, woodchips, cement, etc…). We are up early with our breakfast being delivered to our room so that we can go out on a bus tour around Brisbane. We meet in the Wheelhouse Bar with a large group of other people who are also going on their local tours where we get out coloured dot that we stick to our shirts. Really, it’s our “we are cruise ship tourists badge” which gets quickly stuck to the back of our ship card which is also hidden out of sight.
And as an added bonus we get to clear Australian Border Services for a face to face passport inspection. While we passed the inspection we are not sure how many times we might need to pass through the ABS while we are here touring the island. While it’s somewhat ironic that we passed through ABS to get into Australia and the now again to get onto the ship in Sydney, doing so again was puzzling given that we left Sydney, put out to sea for one full day at sea before arriving back in Brisbane to once again pass through ABS. Now we wonder when the inspection might happen again?
We decided to take a bus tour that would take us to Mt. Tamborine for a village walkabout, then off to a winery for speed wine tasting and a tour through a dark concrete cave filled with glow worms? 🐛. This might have been the sketchiest thing that we have ever done, time to google the Mt. Tamborine glow worms to see if what we saw was real or just a whole bunch of led lights made to look like the real things. Build a concrete cave, add led lights and silky string things, turn out the lights and poof a glow worm cave. And Googling revealed that it was real, the glow worm cave that is, a high priced condo for worms.
Lastly and at last we were headed for the Gold Coast. Once there we were very disappointed when we found that it was not what the brochure promised. Sure, there was sand and sun, but all we saw were high rise condos covering the horizon. These were not a few stories high; they were 20 or 30 floors at least. Most of these are foreign-owned much like Vancouver.
Along with this disappointment came a change in the forecast of 31 degrees. The temperature was at best in the high teens and the winds were extremely high making any effort to be on the sand difficult. “Sand” dunes were beginning to form on the beaches.
After a quick lunch and a brief wander through an indoor mall, we arrived back at the bus as the last passengers, we were early but still last giving you an idea of how well the area was received.
But, it clearly lived up to its name, Gold Coast, as it seems that only a bucket full of gold could make anything affordable.
