The Sunshine Coast

Skyline at coast

There are a lot of similarities between the Gold and Sunshine Coasts. Both are big tourist spots and both cater to them in many ways. The Gold Coast seems to be filled with more young people, including locations such as Surfers Paradise Beach, Bikini beach, and Mermaids beach. It does get very busy and crowded during the holiday season...and we hit the season spot on. While we did a drive through there, we spent more time roaming the Sunshine Coast with our friend Gail, another Doha colleague.

Hove To - view from our room

Gail and Rachel - our friendly guides!

We arrived in Buderim mid afternoon, locating the B and B we were staying at. My pesky first impression was not good...I remembered the corrugated iron shacks built in colonial town as a kid, and this place was covered with the stuff...though it was a high quality steel, I was told. Turns out it was an extremely popular building material, no upkeep to speak of, and it was used extensively all over Australia. The place was actually a model of efficiency, producing their own electricity using solar, capturing rain water to meet most of their needs (it is in a rainforest), recycling everything possible...just delightful. The owners had spent 18 years on their sailboat traveling around the world. Fascinating stories, shared over cups of the and scotch.

Coastline walk - very much like the Oregon coast

Gail met us the next day, taking us all over the area, local beaches, and landmarks around town. We went over for dinner another night, to find ourselves observers of a rather fierce lightning storm. The bolts and sheets were coming so fast you couldn't keep track of the roaring thunder. We sat in the open doorway and watched the show for a good hour before we finally ventured out to go home. 

Alexandria Bay

Spent the next day hiking out along the furthest coast line. They have a lot of different national parks around the country, this one preserving some gorgeous coastline. The color of the water is an unbelievably deep turquoise - absolutely stunning (lots of limestone here). We hiked around the coast, out to Alexandria Bay - our little Lexi already has a bay named after her!