Sunday, March 04, 2007

Burleigh Heads

So, if you recall my post about my original trip to Gold Coast, you should recall a photo looking south along the beach toward a ridge way in the distance. Well, yesterday, I found the ridge. It's a little place called Burleigh Heads. So I got a chance to take the opposite photo:



The big tower with the spire on it is, evidently, the tallest fully residential tower in the world.

The headland is covered by fairly dense rain forest. Walking through it, there was quite a bit of wildlife wandering around. The sheer density of trees seemed to stifle any breeze, so it was also quite hot.



Walking the footpath, you eventually come to an incredible overlook which faces south along the beach. The view from here is simply spectacular:



You can also get some glimpses through the trees. I found one place where the view is perfectly framed by an oddly curved tree trunk:



Walking the lower path, one also notices the difference in the composition of the rock here, in comparison to the rocks seen at the Noosa Heads. The rock here is basalt rock formed by old lava flows. It is almost black in color, and you can see how the original columns have toppled over (basalt naturally forms 6-sided crystal columns):



At the base of the headland there's a nice inlet where I eventually had a swim. The water was nice and calm, though there was quite a current about 10 or 15 feet from the shore. There was a bit of an eddie effect, so, I could swim out a bit further and get carried in one direction, then, swim in closer to the shore and drift the other way:



Also, from here, one can really see the mountains of the Gold Coast Hinterland quite well:

Thursday, March 01, 2007

That's a hail storm!

Canberra had an absolutely incredible hail storm over the weekend. They said that there were drifts up to a METER!! One of my colleagues has a friend who lives there and sent photos. This is nuts!