Gold Coast skyline from Burleigh Heads.. You can see the tallest building -Q1 from here. You got to pay $16 bucks to get to it's viewing floor at the top of the building....
After a hearty breakfast, we proceeded to Point Danger.
But to reach Point Danger is a feat on its own. The GPS had guided us into a traffic nightmare. The traffic was litterally crawling... then we saw a helicopter making its landing and we thought "Oh oh... there must be some really, really terrible accident that requires immediate evacuation of the victims and was the cause of the traffic jam. When we got closer, we found....
What the?! The copters were joy rides!
After crawling for about an hour, we finally arrived at Point Danger.
At Point Danger, there is a Captain Cook Memorial and Lighthouse that is centrally located ON the border line between the states of New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland (QLD). Built to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Cook's discovery of the east coast of Australia, the columns are orientated on the points of the compass. He sighted and named Point Danger on the morning of 17th May 1770.
We had fun "going across" the state borders. It would have been more intriguing during summer months when NSW adopts daylight savings while QLD doesn't. So depending on where your foot is, you might be an hour ahead / behind!
We also found that the QLD portion of it is much more well maintained than that of NSW. NSW's side has a rougher surfaced road and isn't much pleasant to drive on.
Once we've got enough of the border lines, we proceeded to the most eastern point of mainland Australia - Byron Bay. Fortunately, traffic to Byron Bay was smooth. The only problem is parking. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait long.
So we proceeded our upward climb towards the lighthouse. We had brought bootload of jackets, windbreakers, scarves etc in preparation for the cold blustery gusts of winter wind. But much to our dismay and disappointment (and a little relief), it was warm and a nice day to climb flights of stairs without breaking into sweat.
On our way to the lighthouse, we came upon the "half way" point and saw people gazing out to sea. After some eavesdropping, we found out that there were whales frolicking in the waters beyond Cape Byron. They were making their annual migration northwards towards warmer waters. We strained our necks and eyes and finally we were rewarded with a few water spouts and belly splash... Though they were some distance away, you couldn't mistake the white belly turned upside down to face the sky and the graceful creature making hell of a big splash with its back when it went back into the cold sea water.
We also saw a pod of dolphins, riding the waves ...
We hiked up the hills and the countless steps to arrive at the lighthouse, took loads of photos before proceeding down to the hill to the "real" most eastern point.
The waves were truly lashing out at the shore.
It's as if we were high up in the mountains, way above the clouds. But the white froth you see in this picture is actually the choppy waves pounding at the shore.
We took more shots, even some pretty "silly" ones but all in good fun.
“无间道”？“风云？”？
Some joker decided to roll down the hill instead of taking the steps.... Talk about being lazy...
When we've had enough of the waves, wind and sun, we left for our car and proceeded towards Broken Head Nature Reserve.
The GPS had a little difficulty locating the exact point of Broken Head Nature Reserve. Our map do not cover NSW either, so we relied on our gut feel and when we got there, it was nothing more than a reserve. Lots of trees and "lalangs"....
So we headed for Gold Coast - our favourite Japanese Restaurant - Yamasakura - for dinner.
After gorging ourselves to the brim, we headed back to Brisbane, ending our long awaited trip to Byron Bay.
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