Coolangatta Qld, Tweed Heads NSW
Had a lovely weekend in Coolangatta and Tweed Heads which are the twin towns on the border of Qld and NSW. We were catching up with an old workmate of John’s - Andrew and his wife Kym who live 15 minutes inland from Tweed Heads in the northern rivers area of NSW. As John wanted to go to an investment expo at Southbank in Brisbane on Friday we left at 7.45am to get to Brisbane at 10.00am thinking that would give us plenty of time. It took us 2 hours 45mins to travel 137kms! We caught the tail end of an accident and a truck breaking down within 5kms of each other. The traffic jam went on for ever and ever. Eventually we got there with John being 15 minutes late for a Forex seminar he had booked into at 10.30am. I had a great time walking around Southbank and crossed the river into the city centre. Met John at lunchtime and we started our trek south stopping to buy a new 12volt battery for the van in a place called Slacks Creek (love the name). We reminisced along the way at Palm Beach on the Gold Coast where we used to live 20 years ago (before we were married) when John was a partner in an advertising business. John was able to drive straight to the house we used to rent which surprisingly is still there. It was fairly old and rundown when we rented it so figured by now it would have been demolished and replaced but it was still there and looked just the same. We had stopped at a restaurant in Burleigh Heads which is literally right on the beach shore, fantastic views of the ocean to Surfers. It was fun going to all our old haunts we had forgotten how nice parts of the Gold Coast are although it is very busy and populated. We stopped for the night in Coolangatta. The information bureau suggested the Twin Towns Outrigger Hotel which is in Coolangatta and connects to the Twin Towns RSL in Tweed Heads! Quite bizarre how it works. It was a lovely hotel and we had a lovely room which overlooked the Tweed River heads. We had already decided to have dinner at the RSL as they are usually very well priced good meals and whilst we were there checking out which restaurant to eat in (there were six) we also booked into a show – a Tribute to Neil Diamond. A lot of the RSL clubs in the bigger towns have lots of entertainment, quite a bit for free and there is always something to do. So we figured we would make the most of it. Our meal was great, I had a 3 course meal for $19.00, soup, fish and bread pudding and it was very good (looks like another free day for my diet!). The show was excellent – we thought it might be a bit ho hum but Bobby Bruce (Canadian Neil Diamond lookalike) did look and sound just like him – it was great. The funny thing was that John and I were among the few youngest in the audience, average age 65 I reckon. Doesn’t happen often these days. The sad thing was we knew all the songs! If Bobby Bruce comes to a town near you go see him! We saw him and his entourage the following morning at breakfast and he still looked the part. Our hotel room included a buffet breakfast so we made the most of it (looks like another free day for me). After brekkie we wandered around Coolangatta and the ocean. The ocean is just beautiful, white sandy beaches. Very nice. We met up with Andrew at lunchtime and we followed him to his home along some narrow winding roads – wondered how you would even know some homes existed here. Beautiful scenery with Mt Warning in view, though rainforest. Andrew and Kim live amongst the rainforest and it is just beautiful, so serene, lush and green. They have 11 acres with a creek bordering their property, nearest neighbour 700m away. During the wet season the creek floods and can mean no way out of the property – so no work that day. They have been here for 5 months so still settling in with their two cattle dogs, Sheba who is 16 years and Missy 5 years and just recently two baby goats joined the clan. They are now 5 weeks old and still being bottle fed. They are adorable. We had a lot of fun feeding them and watching Kym run around the house cleaning up after them. Yes they come in the house at night as it is too cold outside for them. Both Andrew and Kym are animal lovers. We had a lovely time with Andrew and Kym and just prior to moving to northern NSW they had been on the road for 10 months in their campervan travelling around Australia so we had a lot to catchup on. We would have loved to have spent more time in northern NSW – Bryon Bay is 20 mins away, Ballina about 90kms and in hindsight we probably should have done a housesit on the Gold Coast or nearby but as we had lived there had discounted it which we now realised was not the best move and going there again reinforced how much we like it and one of the few places we have both liked and said we could live there.
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