On Monday we were in Byron Bay so we had a nice chilled out beach day. Byron itself has got a hippie vibe so it's an easy place to relax, it caters well for the tourists and backpackers but without over commercialising the town and ruining its hippie vibe. We both said it'd be a great place to stay for a week or two on holiday and in addition there were lots of other beaches and towns along the bay to explore.

After spending the day on the beach we hopped back in the van and drove to Tweed Heads which was just short of the New South Wales / Queensland border. It was here that we experience our first major spider incident. We'd been sitting in the camp kitchen enjoying a nice glass of red with another two couples (grey nomads) when I popped back to the van to get my hoody, as I was stepping out the van and about to close the door I looked up and seen a gigantic huntsman spider just sitting on the opposite wall. I looked at it and though "oh crap!" calmly closed the van door and announced to Davie that we had a spider situation. The spider was the size of a small child (ok I may be exaggerating a little bit there) so squishing it wasn't really an option - we'd have needed a baseball bat and it'd have created too much mess so the only thing we could do was to place a bowl over the top of it, slot in a piece of paper and then release it back into the wild by someone else's caravan! Simples! I got approximately two hours sleep that night for fear that another spider would get in and crawl on my face - gross gross gross!

The next morning feeling very exhausted we headed for Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast in Queensland. The Gold Coast is Australia's version of Florida USA - very much tourist central. All along the beach front you have got high rises which accommodate holiday makers and then inland you have all the big theme parks. So we parked up at Surfers Paradise and had a walk along the beach front until we found the town then we thought lets walk up to Main Beach and see if we can get a space at the caravan park - it's not that far on the map and it's a nice day. Well about three hours and a very hot and bothered Lauren later we eventually made it to the caravan park but then of course we had to go back for the campervan doh!! Once we were finally sorted we spent another day on the beach and playing in the sea, ah it's a hard life!

That evening we thought we'd go out and enjoy the night scene for a few hours so we found a great spot in an Irish bar where we could see the beach front and the road which leads into town and we just sat and people watched for a few hours with a nice cold beer. It was fabulous! Instead of taking the bus back we walked along the beach front all the way back and amused ourselves by kicking sand at the seagulls - serves them right for stealing my doughnut when we were at Phillip Island!!

Today we have joined the tourist and enjoyed a day out at Seaworld. The dolphins were my absolute favourite, we were both blown away by their show - they are just so clever - I think we need to buy a house with a massive pool so that I can have a pet dolphin, as well as a pet penguin and maybe even a seal or two (they were very amusing to watch also). We also saw a polar bear and her cub, some sharks, rays and lots of fish. We got absolutely drenched on one of the rides called "Storm" and we watched a jet ski show which was pretty cool. So in all an excellent day out and we have even more to come over the next few days - Wet n Wild, Movie World & Dream World, then it'll be onwards and upwards to Brisbane.