Surfer's Paradise

So I decided yesterday that I needed to go see the Pacific Ocean. I've never actually seen the Pacific, let alone taken a swim, but I accomplished both yesterday. If someone had told me a year ago that the first time I saw the Pacific would be from Australia, I'd have laughed...loudly.

I took the train - proper trains with timetables and platforms where you actually have to pay attention to the train you board - down south to Gold Coast. If not for the track work they were doing, I expect it would've taken around an hour. As it was, they had us leave the train, take a bus further down, and pick the train back up, which added (they said) about 30 additional minutes to the trip. I wound up in a place called Surfer's Paradise:



The beach was beautiful and without the foot-punishing layer of shattered shells that we get on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

Perhaps I should have guessed by the name of the place, But the surf here is tremendous, and it's a bit difficult to swim. Also, the water is FRIGID! I did get out into the water for a while, though. Here are a couple more photos (I didn't take many from the beach due to the fear of getting sand in my brand-new, $700 camera):





Also, there are quite a number of VERY tall apartment buildings right on the beachfront. I guess they must not deal with cyclones terribly often there (cyclones are what they call hurricanes in the Southern Hemisphere):



If you look closely in that last photo, you can see in the far lower-left corner, mountains that run straight to the sea quite a way off in the distance. I'm going to have to investigate those more closely once I have transportation that's not busses and trains.

Also, I ran across this on the main avenue in Surfer's Paradise:



I know where my mother will want to go...

Also, I caught this picture on the way back home, during the aforementioned getting off of and back onto the train, while waiting on the platform at Kingston station. Seems they were having a bit of a brush fire or something, and there was actually ash floating about in the air. Whatever was burning (some sort of eucalyptus I'd suspect) spelled especially pungent. Notice the mountain ridge in the background. They are the same ones that continue straight to the water.