Tweed Heads/ Coolangatta

Coolangatta/ Tweed heads

We took off from Coffs Harbour and the Lorikeet Park on Tuesday and felt confident enough to drive without GPS. We had checked out Grafton on Monday and knew the general layout of the area pretty well by then. Grafton was fun-a relaxed town with wide streets and plenty of services, the sun shone warm and there was plenty of parking. OK, so how do you know when Bert is relaxed? He comes shopping without grumbling and doesn’t have to buy the first thing he tries on! Found him some nice shirts to cater for the warmer conditions and I got some shoes for the same reason. They will be handy for next season.

The floods last year came through Grafton with a vengeance. We couldn’t believe how high they must have been when we saw the bridge that was in all the pictures. The river valley is wide and the bridge so high, it would have been petrifying to live nearby, not knowing how high the water might come. That bridge is freaky to drive over too. It has a BEND in the middle and cars are warned to give way to trucks on it. You literally have to stop in the middle, on the crest , and give way if you spy a truck coming up the other side! Another example of how many of these towns have grown too fast and nothing was properly planned.

So we were heading for Ballina thinking we would stay there but when we turned on the GPS for directions, it was BLANK. Switch it off, try again-still nothing. Not happy Jane! Further efforts were to no avail but by then it was time for a rest stop and coffee from the thermos. We spotted a Yellow breasted Robin and marked him off in the book and then got talking to an old couple who were also on the way. Ofcourse enquiries are made about destinations and lots of free recommendations are made. Ross and Coralie were headed for Kirra beach at Coolangatta and since we were free wheeling, we thought we might follow them in. Which we did and were very glad to have a free guide, even though they weren’t aware of it. Turns out they had spent the night at Lorikeet Park too.

Coolangatta/ Tweed Heads are called the Twin Cities. The border between Queensland and NSW runs right through the middle of them-one minute you are in Nsw and on the other side of the road you are in Q’land. It’s all about food, shopping and gaming around here but the night temperatures are around 13 degrees so far and the park is lovely so we might stay a while. A trip into Cooly as the locals call it, found us first at Dick Smith for help, then ‘Laptop2Go’ so we could get the laptop fixed because it wasn’t connecting to the internet. We discovered it was the virus scanner blocking it and thence toHArvey Norman to get the GPS doctored. 30 mins of downloading and ploading and so on restored it and now we are all connected once again. Maybe we should do without all the gadgets and we’d be better off?

We will drive to Surfers Paradise tomorrow (30km) and have a look around. Enjoying sitting in the sun and really holidaying.

Cheers!