Look out, Australia… we’re easing on down your roads!

So yesterday (Monday) we started another bucket list leg of our retirement trip when we rented a camper van in Brisbane! We have it for a week, and our plan is to drive down the east coast of Australia to Sydney (with many stops along the way). After several rental cars as practice, Rob felt ready to tackle the big beast, and we checked out of our Brisbane condo and hit the road yesterday.

Our first stop on this epic journey? The mall. 😂😂 We needed groceries, some cleaning supplies, and a few other things for our camping week, and… well… we needed lovely feet for the beach, so we hit up this giant three story mall in Brisbane with a Target, grocery stores, an Apple Store, and every department store you can imagine (Australia has pretty much everything we do and then some). It was pretty cool, and we left with everything we needed (and pretty toes)! 😂

Day one and two were just short driving days. We spent last night at the very beautiful city of Gold Coast (about an hour Southeast of Brisbane), which spans 70 km along the coast and is full of beautiful beaches with cute names like Surfer’s Paradise and Mermaid Beach. Gold Coast is also home to many of Australia’s theme parks, including Sea World, water parks, Warner Brothers Movie World, and Australia’s biggest theme park, Dream World. For you Floridians, it’s basically like if Orlando and Daytona Beach were put together, only with prettier beaches. We plan to spend 5 of our 7 camper nights in campgrounds, but last night we used our hotel points and stayed at a cool beach view place and had a great dinner at a place called Siblings Kirra.

This morning we woke up and took a great beach walk before doing some sightseeing and having “Moreton Bay Bug sandwiches” (little lobster rolls) at Rick Shores in Burleigh Beach. So good!

After lunch we headed into the “hinterlands” to the Currumbin Rock Pools. On the website, it said “Currumbin Rockpools offers a peaceful rainforest escape featuring gentle riverside trails leading to natural swimming holes and scenic cascades.” The reality was… a little less scenic. We waded in a bit to the murky waters, and then headed back out and hit the road.

From there we headed to our pit stop for the next two nights, Byron Bay. This is a cutle little laid-back surfing town with a lighthouse and a small but vibrant downtown.

Our campground is walkable to the city center, and it is on the beach, which is extra cool. We were proud of ourselves for getting the camper all set up with power and water tonight.

After we got all set up we walked downtown and had dinner at a place called “Orgasmic Foods”. 😂 I will not speak to the specifics of the restaurant’s name, but I WILL say it was very tasty Mediterranean food ! 😂

We are off to early bed tonight, since campgrounds don’t seem to favor late sleepers. More adventures to come! Thanks for adventuring with us!