After a good night’s rest at John and Christine’s home, we woke to
warm temps and beautiful blue skies in a truly magical spot. When we arrived last night, it was well
past sunset, so we really did not have any idea of where we were. We walked outside to see one of the
most magnificent views we’d ever seen from a private home. John and Christine’s property is at the
top of the 1800 foot Mount Tamborine with views of Gold Coast and the Pacific
Ocean and according to John, on a really, really clear day, you can see L.A
(move over Sarah Pailin). But the
views were only the beginning. They’ve owned the property since 1972
(purchasing it from John’s parents, so John has actually lived here his entire
life) they have created some of the most impressive private gardens probably in
all of Australia rivaling some municipal botanical gardens. We had a garden tour before breakfast
that lasted well over an hour!
At breakfast we had a real treat of mulberries on our homemade
muesli. Mulberries are a cross
between a blueberry and blackberry (taste, shape, and texture) and were delicious.
I don’t think we can get these at home, unfortunately. These came from their mulberry trees
that also are home and substrate for silkworms.
Our first stop on our area tour was to have “morning tea” at the top
of Table-Top Mountain, about 40
minutes’ drive on steep, windy mountain roads. John’s family also owns the mountain (leasing it to a cow
farmer). These views were
different, but equally as stunning as those from their home. On the way up, we saw several kangaroos
sharing the land with the cows and very young calves. Christine set up tea and pastries for us which we enjoyed
while taking in the view. We were
looking for koalas and birds and Rhonda noticed what she thought was a koala
high on a eucalyptus tree. It
turned out to be a termite nest which apparently could grow very large and do a
lot of damage.
On the way back down the mountain, Christine told us about a spot
where bats hang out and make a racket and suggested that we roll down our
windows to hear them. These bats are quite a nuisance and
carry a form of equine encephalitis that can be transmitted to humans and can
be fatal. And we thought we were
safe from bats since we had our rabies vaccines. As we drove by the bat colony, the racket became deafening,
and we saw what looked like nests hanging in the trees. John and Christine assured us these
were not nests, but thousands of “flying foxes”, the local, enormous marsupial bat
(wingspan about 3-4’). Many had young nursing in their pouches.
We made
John pull the car over so that we could take a closer look, and spent the next
15 minutes or so taking pictures of these bizarre creatures. Fortunately, the bats had worse aim
than the noddie terns on Heron Island, and Jeri came out clean as a whistle.
John and Christine were very amused by our fascination with these bats-they
just saw them as pests (like chipmunks or squirrels to us).
After we were torn away from the bat colony, we headed to the
coastal beach area between Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast. Since school is out for their summer break,
there were large numbers beachgoers.
We got to watch surfers and surf-kiters show their stuff while we ate
(again) lunch at the Currumbin Beach Vikings Surf Lifesaving Club.
These clubs are all over Australia, and
generally have food, drink, and gambling (though we saw no gambling here). The club sat high on a rocky outcropping
(Elephant Rock-looks sort of like an elephant), and had 3-walled, ceiling to
floor glass views of the beach. We
shared a platter of seafood fresh
out of the ocean-prawns, calmari, flat fish, crab, and “bugs” (lobster/crawdad
like creature, Maron).
Amelia, if you are reading this to the girls, skip this part, or
Rhonda and Milt will kill me.
Rhonda and Milt had a real hard time in the gift shop, but found the
perfect mate to their Singing in the Rain Dogs. I better not give too much away.
The day’s finale was drinks while watching the sunset followed by
rack of lamb (Jeri and I are not big lamb eaters, but this was fantastic) and
dessert of fresh rhubarb cheese cake.
Rhonda had built up Jeri as the world’s best cake cutter, but rhubarb
does not lend itself to clean slicing, and the results were less than
optimal. But it still was
marvelous. We waddled off after
dinner to start doing laundry and packing for our flight to Tasmania tomorrow
morning.
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