Planet MadDog - Gold Coast Holiday 99

It had been almost a year since my last holiday... over 11 months of annoying clients, boring work and general nothingness... It was time for a break. I had been waiting for a lull in the workload before I took any sort of holidays, but we've been flat out this year, so that didn't look likely...

"Ahh, bugger it... they can do without me for one week" I thought, so I booked us some tickets to the Gold Coast. This was going to Gracie's first time in Queensland, her first time on an aeroplane, her first time to a decent beach, and her first time to some decent theme parks. It was gunna be great...

	This picture was taken from within the boarding gate, just before we got on the plane. Gracie was getting a bit nervous about now...
	I love getting the window seat on a plane... I don't love getting a seat over the wing...
	"All those people down there look like ants!" Looking over the patchwork paddocks of suburban Melbourne shortly after take-off.
	Off we get... This is the fist time I've actually gotten off a plane via those little stairway thing. Gracie flatly refused to get in this photo...
	At the hotel. This is the pool area (Duh...). Theres a little water slide there, and a sectioned off spa area. Unfortunately we never really got the chance to swimming throughout the whole trip.
	After we arrived at the hotel, our room wasn't quite ready so we decided to go for a little walk. Here's the start of the Gold Coast. Around the corner is just rocks and stuff. This is about a 5 minute walk from the hotel.
	Back at the hotel. We decided to have lunch at the hotel's restaurant that over looks the pool area while we were waiting for our room. Then I spotted a few lizards basking in the sun by the pool.
	More lizards. For lunch, I had Garlic King Prawns, and Gracie had some sort of spicy pasta stuff.
	The pool from a different angle. Sorry for the blurry pictures so far. I didn't realise that I'd had the wrong lens setting on the camera.
	At the lunch table... Gracie didn't think I would take this picture... Then she thought that I'd delete it... She didn't know I'd put it on the Internet... Oh yeah... I'm a dead man..
	Coolangatta, and Tweed Heads are known as the Twin Towns, and are on either side of the Queensland and New South Wales border. Tweed Heads is on the NSW side. Here's Gracie standing on the border.
	We spent the rest of the day at the Pacific Fair mall. There we saw a giant bouncy castle thingy called "SILLY DONKEY"... heheh.. thats funny...

DAY 2

	Here's our hotel from the outside. I thought I'd take this pic while waiting for the bus to Sea World.
	Here's an Ibis that came right up close to us while we were waiting for the bus... Well it was pretty cool at the time...
	Yaay! We're at Sea World! This is some sort of fish I think...
	Still at the Sea World fish-tank type place. Here's a cool looking shark.
	Here's the bit at Sea World where they put injured and recovering birds.
	There was this big boat thing but it was closed for renovations, but there were some cool dolphins swimming around it. I love dolphins. Espcially done in breadcrumbs.
	These are a couple of seals swimming about this big enclosure thing.
	Here's a photo from the ultra-lame sea-lion show. Don't get me wrong, I like the stupid little tricks and stuff, but the acting is just SOOO terrible.
	The Water Ski Spectacular! Note the cool mid-flap segull! Cool eh?
	More "spectacular" water skiing.
	Apparently, this is like the most photographed skiing trick. Too bad those dark clouds ruined the shot.
	I was really reluctant to go anywhere near this weird looking thing, but after the chick that takes the photos assured me that she was quite harmless, I decided to get a pic taken. After all, its not every day you get your picture taken with a big walrus thing in a pink dress.
	These are the lucky people that shelled out the extra bucks to go swimming with the dolphins. They got photos of them hugging the dolphin and the dolphin jumping over their heads. That would be awesome.
	Here they are again.
	(In American accent) "It's Cartoon Network Cartoon Beach!" Picture taken from the bridge that leads over to the corkscrew.
	Here we are at the end of the day. Gracie stands on the steps to Sea World.
	We had originally planned to go to Jupiter's Casino for tea this night, but the asshole bus driver went straight past us. So we said "Screw him" and walked on down the road to see what else we could find. We came across this seafood/steak restaurant, and, well lets just say that we wish we'd seen the menu before deciding to eat here. I ordered the Monster BBQ King Prawns for $28 and Gracie had a coupe of bowls of salad for $20. Hmmm... Good thing I'd had many beers that night. The waitress was tripped out by my digital camera and insisted that she take a photo of us... and the biggest wedge of lemon I've ever seen!

DAY 3

	This is the beach directly across the road from our hotel. It was a great beach and you could see it stretch all the way arount to Surfers Paradise.
	We were having too much fun to take many photos here at Warner Brothers Movie World. This s the big archway that leads through to the Looney Tunes Village, which is basically the really kiddyish part of Movie World.
	The good thing about Movie World is that there are heaps of tools walking around in costumes. Here we see Mr Freeze (hidden) and Poison Ivy driving around in the Freeze-mobile... or something...
	Here's Batgirl. Not just some chick in a costume... The REAL Batgirl... She was fighting crime!
	Yeah baby, yeah! Shagadelic! Ummm... Shag! Austin Powers dances it up with some chicks down the main street.
	Same scene... different angle...
	You've all seen the annoying ads at the cinema, now here it is! The Wild Wild West Adventure Ride. It's got a good bit at the start, pretty boring in the middle but the last drop is unreal, especially when you have the hot sun beating down on you all day. I went on it 3 times. Gracie went twice. She only didnt go on it the 3rd time because I made her go on the Lethal Weapon, and she didn't feel to good after that.
	I'll fix your little red wagon!
	Thats me! Finally, on my third ride, I got a front seat by myself, and it's the best!
	Batgirl again, keeping the streets of Movie World free from crime.

DAY 4

After much begging and pleading, Gracie finally agreed to pose for me in front of the plane.

Back to Index