We left out of Brisbane not having a clue where we're heading for next, but that's the beauty of being on a road trip. Australia's our oyster, well Brisbane to Sydney is. We looked up a couple of places on a map, then referred to some online blogs, as we don't travel using any guidebooks now. We decided we'd check out surfers paradise, even if we don't actually surf! It's on the Gold Coast, so we figured it would be a good place to stop along the way. It's around 70km (43 miles) from Brisbane and it only took us an hour to get there.

Once we were there, I noticed how many high rise buildings there were and long open stretches of white sandy beaches. Although it did have lots of talk buildings, I still liked the place. We found somewhere free to park up using the app, then went to explore the place. The weathers as hot as it was in Fiji, so i'm adjusting to the temperatures here, but they're still too hot for me really. It will be nice to keep the tan topped up though. We walked along the promenade and there were surfers everywhere, it's not called surfers paradise for nothing. There must have been a sand figure making competition as there were loads of intricately made figures dotted all along the boulevard. We carried on walking around and looked at all the works of art.

We then walked along surfers paradise beach, and saw people surfing and riding the waves. They were really big waves, so I guess that's why it's popular here with surfers. We went for lunch, another maccy'ds special, well it's cheap so why not. After lunch, we walked around the town for a bit and headed to k mart. We later came back to cook our dinner. There are plenty of picnic benches and BBQs in the parks here, so it's easy to cook around here. We even had a scenic spot by the river.

Once we had dinner sorted, we decide to park up overnight where we parked during the day. There were public toilets and cold showers there, so all the facilities we need really. It's so much better than New Zealand, which had no free public showers. At around midnight, we had a knock at the door, they were shining a torch in. John answered to the police asking where we were from. They didn't ask us to move on, so we stayed there for the night.

After our close call last night, we got up early and out of our spot and went to have breakfast somewhere else. We came back afterwards to go for a dip in the sea. It's not really safe to swim here in surfers paradise due to strong undercurrents, and big waves, so we just went in the sea to jump the waves. Floating past us was a huge jellyfish, which we think was dead. After seeing that, I didn't fancy staying in the water for much longer so got out and made use of the free shower. We decided we'd seen enough of this place, so started to drive towards Byron Bay.