Today we picked up our hire car, a blue Toyota Corolla and left Brisbane. Stephen was driving and after a few initial emergency stops and probable whiplash injuries as he negotiated the sensitive breaking we were on our way.

We took the Pacific highway for about half an hour until we hit the Gold coast. We joined up with the Gold coast highway which hugs the coast for a few hours before rejoining the motorway.

Our first stop was surfers paradise. A long strip of high-rise hotels and apartments which reminded me of Benidorm. We didn't stay long but pulled off a few miles down the road to see the beach. Think pristine white sand and turquoise surf pounding against the rocks and the beach. There was hardly anyone on the beach. A couple of excessively tanned men and women advertising skin cancer but that was about it. If we had turned up on a weekend it would have been a different matter entirely I'm sure....

Once we left the beach we carried on to Coolangatta where we stopped for lunch at a healthy burger bar. We then grabbed a couple of ice creams and headed over to the esplanade for a bit of sun before carrying on with our journey. I liked this place as it had a very laid back feel and it was quite amusing people watching. I have never seen so many anorexic people in one place, they're everywhere in Australia and I want to throw them all into a room together and force feed them chips!

After 20 minutes or so we picked up the Pacific highway again to Byron Bay arriving at what we thought was around 2 pm. However, we subsequently found out that we had lost an hour somewhere between Brisbane and Byron Bay at it was actually gone 3pm...weird!

We checked into the Glen Vale holiday park where we slummed it by my standards in a chalet style cabin. We opened the door to find they had not put the air conditioning on for us so it must have been about 40 degrees in there and not much cooler outside. There was little option other than to open a couple of bottles of Dry Rock to cool down....

We then headed into town. The beach was nice but crowded with backpacker types, surf dudes and the I love myself brigade. We got our bearings, checked out the eating options and then found a bar called the beach where we could sit in the sun and chill out for a while. Despite being in Australia for 2 and a bit weeks we are still not used to the heat so it wasn't long before we had to retreat to our air-conditioned cabin for showers before tea.

I'm not sure what I was expecting but Byron Bay didn't make much of an impression on me. I don't think Stephen was that fussed either.