Friday I-Wish-I-Were-There (Brisbane, Australia)

Today I’m crossing the ditch to Brisbane, on the Sunshine coast of Australia. We were last on the Sunshine coast when my two kids were 3 and 7, and probably a little young to enjoy the Theme parks we dragged them to. 

Highlights.

Dreamworld. I just loved Tiger Island and catching a glimpse of the keepers walking one of the tigers through the park was a buzz. A lot of the rides here were too scary for my two, so we seemed to spend most of the day walking around in the heat and seeing some of the native Australian animals in other parts of Dreamworld. Fifteen minutes before the park closed by brother-in-laws finally offered to keep an eye on the kids while my husband and I went on one ride – we chose the The Giant Drop. A really, really bad move for someone who doesn’t like rollercoasters and is afraid of heights. Winched up to 120 meters above the ground and then suddenly dropped and reaching a speed up to 135km per hour, what was I thinking?

Warner Bros Movie World. A few more kid-friendly rides here, so my husband and I took turns taking our 7-year-old son on the Roadrunner rollercoaster. It wasn’t until we were nearly done to the day that we discovered the 3-year-old was in fact tall enough to ride – whoops! Fun getting our photos taken with ‘celebs’ like Austin Powers and Wonder Woman – well, my husband really enjoyed getting his photo with the voluptuous Wonder Woman…

Surfer’s Paradise. We visited Brisbane and Surfer’s Paradise in the winter, so we gave swimming a miss – and the waves at Surfer’s certainly lived up to their name. No way any of us was hitting the water. We still had fun on the gorgeous sandy beach though, and enjoyed burying my boy and creating a mermaid’s tail on him – we told him it was a shark’s tail to make him feel better!

Australia Zoo. No sign of the Irwins unfortunately, but we had a great day here and it was really cool to get up close to some of Australia’s cuddly, and not-so-cuddly critters. My son and I queued up and had a photo taken of us with a large python draped around our necks, my husband, strangely (not), offered to stay with our 3-year-old.

Brisbane has far more to offer than the tiny parts we saw, so hopefully on our next trip across the ditch we’ll have time to explore them!

Tracey