Get Your Glow On

We had ended our day Thursday with a drive from Brisbane down to Surfer’s Paradise on Australia’s Gold Coast. As Surfer’s Paradise is only an hour south of Brizzie, it is the perfect getaway for urban dwellers. I’m guessing that 30 or 40 years ago, Surfer’s Paradise was exactly what it’s name describes: a beach bum hangout where sunburned surfers napped in bungalows before paddling out to the waves at dawn. Today, Surfer’s Paradise shows its growing pains as its laid-back vibe has begun to attract type A urbanites who need a bit of R&R. Backpackers hangouts have been pushed to the periphery, while the downtown is a mishmash of highrises and clothing stores with storewide $10 clearance sales. As we walked around in athleisure wear, club promoters vied for our business, only to be one-upped by fit young men selling tickets to club crawls. That’s right, pub crawls have officially been replaced as the kings of Friday night debauchery.

Tourist grunge aside, though, we actually really loved Surfer’s Paradise. We walked along the beach, waves crashing like clockwork to our side, for over an hour before seeking refuge in the shade of the city buildings. 

The beach was fairly empty, likely because it was a weekday, but we saw enough walkers with 30 years of sun damage to their skin to know that some locals had joined our ranks. It was easy to see why people would come here to relax and vacation – or even to retire. It had an easy pace with enough life injected by the tourists to keep businesses fresh and stores bustling. Plus, if you ever got wanderlust, Brisbane and its international airport were only an hour away. But still, the beach would always draw you home. I’m not even a beach person, and I was really enjoying myself. To be fair, though, I was envisioning jogs at dawn along the hard-packed sand, the beach to myself and the colors of the sky reflected on the water. I wonder if it would be like Barcelona, where my morning jogs coincided with the clubs closing for the night and disgorging their hard-partying dregs onto the beach to sober up. Anyway, Josh has more of a soft spot for beaches than I do and he thought it was one of the most beautiful beaches he had ever seen.

Though we had liberally applied sunscreen, our exposed skin was beginning to crisp. We retreated to the stores that lined the winding main tourist street. It seemed as though every third store was named Ugg World, Ugg Universe, Ugg King, or something similar. They know what the tourists want: a shearling vacation for their feet. At least, that’s what I presumed. As we had seen in Sydney, Ugg offers a much broader array of merchandise than we knew, including a lot of furs. We kept up our search for a Finn-colored sheepskin (Josh has a dream of our dog having carpet camouflage), but we were unsuccessful.

[A quick note to any would-be Surfer’s Paradise shoppers: price comparison is key! Out of curiosity, we compared the price of some items across stores and found up to 40% differences in the ticket price of the same item – as in, same brand, same color, same size.]

When late afternoon arrived, it was time to escape the city. We drove about an hour into the woods to the Natural Bridge, a part of a local park that has a glowworm cave. We arrived early, planning to hike other paths in the area until it got dark, only to discover that there was exactly one 1 km path to the glow worms and nothing else in the area. Plus, going off the beaten path was strictly forbidden because they’re trying to preserve that ecosystem and the land is home to the Yugambeh Aboriginals. Still, we hiked the loop to appreciate the dense, lush forest in the daylight.

The glowworms are actually the larvae of a species of fly found only in Australia and New Zealand. They luminesce to attract pretty, which get stuck in the long sticky threads that they produce. Their bioluminescence apparently peaks during the warm, wet months (December through March). As a bonus, a certain species of fungus that grows during those months is also bioluminescent. When the sun had finally set, we ventured down the path again to the glow worm cave. The walls were pitch black and the waterfall gurgled in the background. As our eyes adjusted, we saw the glow. Deep in the corners of the cave, small green dots huddled in groups and then spread across rock veins, creating green constellations overhead. It was beautiful and felt a little magical.

We ended the evening with a return to downtown Surfer’s Paradise to wander the pop-up market along the beach. I can’t say the wares were particularly tempting, but it’s a pretty great place to take an evening walk.

Spotted: Vomatron, a rollercoaster for the brave of heart and steel of stomach. We spotted it as we drove back to Surfer's Paradise and did not mourn the fact that we'd missed out on this local experience.

Spotted 2: A more stomach-friendly one: Hugh Chocman, a local gelato flavor to celebrate that hunky Australian-bred man-wolverine.