Back on the Pacific Highway we headed up to Coolangatta, which is the home of the Gold Coast airport, to meet Zoe. The town of Coolangatta is very pleasant, quite smart with plenty of beachfront cafes and bars, but the interesting bit for us was Boundary Road where one side of the street in in New South Wales and the other in Queensland. There is a time difference too so one side of the street is an hour ahead of the other (NSW residents will tell you the time difference is more like 50 years). The views from the lookout in Coolangatta are fabulous, one way the full extent of Byron Bay can be seen and, in the other direction, Surfers Paradise.
What can I say about Surfers Paradise? It is truly ghastly, sort of a hideous cross between a seaside resort, Las Vegas and London Docklands. There are just hundreds of high rise hotels and apartment blocks, each one taller than the next and as a result of an ironic town planning mistake, these massive buildings keep the afternoon sun off the beach so it is a bit dark and gloomy surfing there later in the day. It also appears quite soul less, there are no people to be seen walking around or having coffee and ice creams, they must all either be surfing or in their air conditioned apartments and hotel rooms. It is the place for hen and stag (or buck's as they are called here) weekends which is why Zoe was headed this way so we collected her from the airport and went exploring.
We started with Byron Bay, I had been looking forward to going there and it lived up to my expectations. It is the go to place for young backpackers and is very crowded but still retains its charm. The town is dominated by shops, bars and cafes but they are pretty much all independent and mostly a bit cosmic, plenty of locals and visitors wearing tie dye and plaiting their own shoes but it is still a great place to visit. The bay itself is sensational, made up of two huge crescent shaped beaches but they are the most crowded beaches I have seen so far in Australia, and that includes Bondi. The whole area is topped by a magnificent white lighthouse which is a bit expensive to visit but we could not go in anyway as they did not allow dogs. 
We carried on along the tourist drive through Lennox Head and Brunswick Heads, both beautiful and worth another visit, and on through Moo moo where all the power poles and the garage were painted in cow print. Moo moo also had a Big Thing - the Big Motorbike, which was pretty good, not quite up there with the Big Prawn but better than many of the others.
This time we drove right through the middle of Surfers Paradise to drop Zoe at her destination - it didn't get any better!

Apologies for the lack of blogging recently but we have just returned from a month in England following a family bereavement. It was a sad reason for the trip but we managed to catch up with friends and family which is always a pleasure.
Back to where I left off on our trip up the East coast to meet up with Zoe. We hit the Pacific Highway heading north again after our night in Coffs Harbour, taking note of the amusing place names as usual, Tom Cat Creek, Possum Brush Road, Henry Hawkeye Edwards Bridge, Middle Brother Road, I could go on and on. Our destination was Ballina and it was interesting to see the crops change as we headed towards warmer climes, bananas are the main crop in Coffs Harbour but sugar cane took over as we passed Grafton.
We arrived in South Ballina in pouring rain but discovered the campsite we had booked was fantastic, right between a huge beach and the Richmond River. Once the rain stopped we went to explore and found the campsite had a full size flying trapeze where they gave circus lessons every Saturday! 
The campsite is on the very tip of South Ballina where the river meets the sea and we stood on the huge breakwater between the two marveling at how the water on the river side looked almost black while the sea on the beach side was blue. The whole area was surrounded by National Park so Monty had to stay in the car but we spotted a couple of echidnas and several birds we don't see at home. Monty was not allowed on the beach either so we drove to a dog friendly one nearby and sat watching people in their 4WD vehicles bombing up and down. I think I may have said before that I don't see the point of this, anyone who knows me understands how much I love cars and driving but I can't see the sense in messing up my own car with sand and salt water. Must just be me because plenty of people enjoy doing it, in fact not far from us there are huge sand dunes where people take their 4WDs and the local McDonalds even has a free air pump in the car park for them to reinflate their tyres! Anyway, enough about that and back to the trip.
Next day we awoke to sunshine and took the chain ferry across to Ballina before setting of to pick Zoe up from the airport at Coolangatta on the Gold Coast. I had been looking forward to Ballina because it is home to the Big Prawn which I had heard was one of the better Big Things and it did not disappoint, it is splendid!