Day 52-54 Gary and the Gold Coast

Just a short post today. We're back on the road after a rest and admin day. We know we are heading toward home so the feeling of adventure is beginning to make way for thoughts and plans about our route home post theme parks. I'd like to travel as much along the coast as possible.

We've both been to Byron several times so were happy to skip this part... however neither of us have been to Tamworth. I'm much of a country music guy, but darn it, im a music fan so it seems right to pass through here on our way home. Like the early part of our journey from home, we'll be eating up many miles in a short period time. We'll cover nearly 2000 km's in about 8 days. I've mapped a rough outline of what our entire journey should look like once were home.

In the meantime, what have we been doing the last few days? Some mucking around in Hervey Bay, a visit to a friend in Nerangba and then onto the Gold Coast. After many family meetings we all agree that Movie world, Wet n wild and Sea world are the ones for us.

On our way to the gold coast, we spent half a day with a retired work colleague and friend Gary May. Gary has a deep interest in flora and fauna so I new Em and the kids would hit it off.


A visit to this botanist's house is a genuine eye opener. He has the largest collection of air plants in Australia. People near and far seek out Gary's plants and we could see why... For those who are not familiar, air plants are a tropical American plant that can grow on trees, wires or anything really. They have long, narrow leaves that absorb water and nutrients from the atmosphere instead of the ground or whatever they are attached to. Mostly beautiful and very different, they remind me of something out of a sci fi movie... Such is Gary's skill, he managed to create 4 entirely new species and is currently working on publishing a book.

This video is Gary sharing some bush tucker with us. Wish I could remember the name of these tiny tiny melons... in any case, they are good eating.

Gary also gave us honey to sample from this bee hives that  house several colonies of native bees. We also played with a camera microscope, studying all sorts of things from the garden. Josh's freckles under the microscope were also on show.

After Gary's house, we headed further south, past the theme parks, through heeaps of traffic and into yet another caravan park. Being the Gold Coast, this one had to have the largest water slide we've seen in a caravan park yet. 

I was very happy to see our fuel economy improve considerably on the smooth highways close to brissy. Think we got as low at 16.5 L/100kms (unheard of on any other highway so far). Along the way we stopped to fill up for the 48 thousandth time. I felt somewhat guilty about our diesel consumption after peering over to see a mostly empty electric car charging station sheltered under a huge solar panels - one of the smartest things I've seen in Qld. I also love the Qld highway trivia signs. Instead of a benign "drowsy drivers die" message, in Qld the signs ask you trivia questions, then give you the answer about a km later. Great idea... why don't we have these back home I wonder...