Thrills in the rain

I know lots of you have been wondering whether I came good on my promise of a theme park on the Gold Coast. Well the answer is sh******************t yes. I've used the drawn out expletive as that's the noise I made as Dylan and I dropped 119 metres at 135km/hour when we rode the 'Giant Drop'! Dylan umm-ed and aah-ed about doing it for three days but I made a deal with him that if he wanted to do it, I'd do it with him (the others didn't meet the height restrictions).

Yes, the paragraph above does say three days, that's how long we spent at Dreamworld. I bought a three-day ticket as the weather was still pretty dodgy and if I was going to spend hundreds of dollars to get in, I wanted to make sure everyone was able to do everything they wanted. It's a good thing too, I don't think there is any way we would have got through it all in a single day.

I have to say that we all enjoyed it much more than I thought we would (actually than I thought I would - Dylan and Lukas were so excited to arrive they wanted their photo taken in the car park!). We had one fine day and two with rain, but managed to do all that we wanted without getting too wet.

The very first ride we went on was the old classic, the log ride. I slightly over-estimated Evie and Max's thrill desire as there were tears on the final drop but they both recovered and were happy to go on other slightly-less-thrilling rides.













The all round favourite was the vintage cars, closely followed by the flying donkeys and teacups for the littlies and the water slides at the included water park for the big boys.


Dreamworld's real highlight was the huge variety on offer, meaning there was plenty of choice for everyone at all their different ages and stages.

We watched movies, did dogems and merry-go-rounds, had photos with movie characters, saw performing tigers and the Australian shearing show presented by a shearer with a suspiciously New Zealand-sounding accent.

The water park almost looked out of reach at one stage thanks to the weather. Dylan was determined to ride the slides while the rest of us watched from under umbrellas one afternoon but thankfully the rain cleared for a couple of hours the next day and everyone was happy to get wet.


















Also included in our ticket was a trip to the top of Skypoint at Surfers Paradise, 77 levels up, so we took the opportunity to stop in there and appreciate the views of the tourist strip. Lukas was impressed to count 54 pools in the surrounding hotels and houses!

The Gold Coast lived up to its expensive reputation and cost an absolute fortune. I pretty much blew the budget for the rest of the journey in a few short days. So it's lotto tickets and eggs-on-toast from here on in!

The weather hasn't been our friend since the Sunshine Coast, but we finally got a beautiful day for our last day in Queensland. We spent it at the lovely Burleigh Heads walking along the beach and National Park, watching the surfers and basking in the sun sipping 'superfood' smoothies (what is maca anyway?) A nice way to finish up in the sunshine state.