Day 5 - Tropical Fruit Farm, Harbour Town factory outlet & of course YATALA pies!

Our last day saw us making full use of it. We picked up our rental car and headed up to New South Wales to the Tropical Fruit Farm.

This place was huge and we had a tour of the fruit farm which mainly had avocados and macadamia. It was fun & educational, a tractor brought us round, we cracked macadamia shells & at fresh macadamia nuts and tasted an array of fruits. For the kids they had kiddy stuff like feeding the cows, sheep, kangaroo, a cruise down a river, feeding the ducks and even a mini train ride!

 

 

DW cracking the macadamia

We headed to Harbour town factory outlet and obviously we were too busy shopping to take any photos... and before heading to the airport, we JUST HAD to stop by Yatala for the pies! The place hasn't changed since my last visit here a decade ago and the pies are still just as lovely. Huge chunks of meat and savoury. Given the thumbs up by Dw and Jill!

Day 4 - Gold Coast - Aqua duck

Ok, this day was a total bummed out day. We woke at 3.30am to get ready for our pickup at 4.30am for our Hot air balloon. It was totally unfortunate that the weather was too foggy for our balloon to set sail and so, our highlight of this trip was a no go. Jill was pretty much disappointed as I had promised to fulfil 2 of her wishes for this trip - feed wild dolphins & hot air balloon.

And so, we did something pretty lame and went on the Aqua duck tour! Nevetheless Jill enjoyed herself, having had the chance to steer the ducky boat in the water.

Day 3 Gold Coast - Dreamworld

I decided to head to Dreamworld this morning. Clear, blue skies & beautiful weather! Great for a day out to a theme park.

Wish I could wake up to this every morning!

The bus stop was just right in front of our apartment, so it didn't make much sense to cab or take a tourist shuttle to Dreamworld. We took the public bus, very clean, very punctual (Yeah, I surfed for the timetable before starting off, else I suppose the wait is going to be very long) and alot of cheaper. The kids were free and for the 4 adults, it was about $50 both ways. Alot more affordable!

 

This was Didi's 1st time at a theme park and a reason why I had chose Dreamworld was because it had an all in 1 thingy - Wiggles World, Madgacascar, Sheep Shearing, free roaming Kangaroos & Koalas. 

Day 2: Gold Coast & Glowworm Night Tour

We left Tangalooma early the next morning. It was a wise choice for that day as it was rainy and we probably wouldn't be able to much if we had stayed any longer. Otherwise, I would think if the weather was good, I would have wanted to stay longer to do parasailing, quad biking, sand tobogganing and even feed the pelicans!

              Simple breakfast with bread, butter, cheese & fresh milk from the supermarket on the resort.

Our pre-arranged transport pick up by Surfcity Transfers was already waiting to bring us into Gold Coast. I wanna take this opportunity to thank Karen as she must have been one of the most efficient Aussies I have ever dealt with! Emails to her were responded very quickly, I can safely say within the hour and confirmation was initiated a day or 2 prior to the pick up, which was definitely assuring. The VITO was new & clean and most importantly, her price was the lowest amongst the few that I had sourced. Very value for money indeed. 

Accomodation was a huge 2 bedroom ocean facing apartment at Mantra Circle on Cavill. Very convenient indeed with direct access to Wooly's! 

After spending the afternoon picking up our groceries for our next few days, we all had a good rest to prep ourselves for our night tour of the rainforest at Mt Tambourine with Southern Cross 4WD.

Stopping by a cafe at Mt Tambourine for yummy cakes, fresh cookies & hot  cocoa before starting our tour

 

Darren was great with our kids, he has 2 sons himself!

Given that it's a night tour & we don't own super cameras, we didn't take any much photos of our tour at the rainforest. But with the rain, it was an almost perfect night! The glowworms glowed so brightly and we had a good experience, feeling what exactly a rainforest was, very very cool whilst being sheltered from the rain by the umbrella of huge trees.

Thanks Darren for a great night out! You sure have a knack to spot the smallest nocturnal creatures ever!

Brisbane Day 1

After an overnight flight, we finally landed and were ferried to Holt Wharf to catch our launch to Tangalooma. Weather was drizzly, a little chilly and of course we were quite fatique and were looking forward just checking in, having a good rest & feeding the dolphins later at night!
                                                      

Tangalooma

Our 1st stop upon arriving in Brisbane was to head to Tangalooma. We had touched down at about 7am and hung around the airport till our transport came at 9am to send us to Holt Wharf to catch the launch to Moreton Island. On hindsight, I ought to have planned this stop at the end of our Brisbane holiday. A non stop 8 hour flight & another 3 hours till our launch departed at 10am proved too overwhelming for my little boy. He threw up all over me as our launch maneuvered along the choppy waters of Moreton Bay. Apparently another little kid 2 rows in front threw up as well. She was coincidentally on the same flight as us.

Just a night at Tangalooma set us back by almost $1K (2 bedroom apartment & launch transfers) but it was all worth it given that we all had our 1st ever chance to hand feed wild dolphins. Jill was by far the most excited as she loves dolphins very much. Spotting them swimming to shore was an unforgettable experience. 1st came one, followed by another and soon after, there were 7 of them swimming round & round in the shallow shore waters. It was dark, rainy & the water was cold but being right there in the thick of action made up for it all!

                                                           This is us, feeding Silhouette

It's time for a VaCaTiOn!

Looking forward to our ocean view apartment! Got this awesome pic off goldcoast.com

We're flying tomorrow night to Brisbane, spending a night at Tangalooma and then heading on to Surfer's Paradise!

I'm looking forward to this break after a very sleepless week. Dw was out-stationed the whole week in Germany and I was left looking after a sick & very cranky Jenson alone. He came down with high fever on Sunday night and a couple of days after, cough & runny nose followed. It's not easy to feed this guy his meds & it gets really bad when he needs to be roused from his sleep for the night dosage. He alternates between struggling, yelling & shutting his mouth and I'm alternating between clamping him down, trying to squirt some meds in when his mouth is open and squeezing in the syringe between his shut lips. It has been a battle every night and I'm zonked. The kids were sleeping in separate bedrooms so that the flu wouldn't be passed from brother to sister and yes, that meant I had to shuffle between 2 bedrooms every night. Each time a kid whined, I'm up & off to the other room. It's either mother's instinct or mothers just have very sharp ears to somehow catch even the softest whimp from the kids. (By that I mean most dads can always sleep through the night even when the kid is bawling.. WHY?!!?!!)

Long story cut short, I'm extremely sleep deprived. Dw's heading back this evening & I know he's going to be exhausted. This sweet fellow always tells me he can't sleep well on his business trips when I'm not by his side... awwwwwwww... dearest dw, that's really really sweet and can you up the sweetness a notch by sacrificing one more night of sleep and let me sleep through tonight whilst you take over the kids...

It's going to be a red eye flight tomorrow. Jill is usually an easy flyer and I've told her numerous times that she MUST sleep on this flight else when she reaches Oz, she won't be able to enjoy herself. As for Jenson, I can only hope he will sleep & not go wild exploring every inch of the plane like what he did on our recent Hanoi trip . In any case, if all fails, there's always sedilex... which by the way, IS legitimate as he coughs alot especially at night cos I'm not one of those moms who use drugs to knock kids out on flights.

I love holidays, I work darn hard for them and I'm going to enjoy myself to the max! Gold Coast, here we come!