The Gold Coast is a big holiday destination in Australia with several water and theme parks as well as a zoo and stunning beaches right outside metropolitan areas.
This was our first of 2 destinations in Queensland, the 'Sunshine State' above New South Wales. The Gold Coast was a very thin long city that had some really built up regions like Surfers Paradise where we stayed and some that didn't seem to be part of a city at all like Coolangata.
The beaches all along the gold coast were fantastic with really high windspeeds it made it perfect for surfing and body boarding or just trying to avoid the waves was fun. A sand sculpting competition was taking place while we were there that had some fantastic 'monsters and ghouls' right on the boardwalk.
Surfers Paradise was very geared towards tourism with towering hotels everywhere you looked and a thriving nightlife, which we enjoyed for 2 nights using some of the discounts available for backpackers.
In hindsight I wish we had gone to some of the attraction parks but at the time they had seemed very expensive so we didn't end up seeing any of them. Next stop Brisbane!