Knowing that the traffic would be bad yesterday as it was a public holiday (just like in the UK on a Bank Holiday Monday), and taking advantage of the fact that we’re both unemployed bums at the moment, we had a lazy day on Monday and decided to go to the beach today instead.

We drove down to the Gold Coast. What should have been a 50 minute drive down the Pacific Highway took nearly two hours because of an accident and roadworks.

When we got there we did something we talked about doing the last two times we’ve been to the Gold Coast but never quite got around to – we went up to the Observation Deck of the Q1 building in Surfer’s Paradise.

At 322.5 metres tall, the Q1 is the world’s tallest residential tower and offers awesome panoramic views of the Gold Coast. It also has one of the fastest lifts in the world – going from the ground floor to the Observation Deck on floor 77 in 42.7 seconds.

The view was indeed spectacular.

Views northwards towards Brisbane:

View south towards the New South Wales border:

View inland looking over the inland waterways towards the mountains into the hinterland:


After taking in the views we went for Lunch before hitting the beach for a couple of hours.

View of the Q1 building from the beach:


After relaxing on the beach we drove down the Gold Coast to Burleigh Heads. According to the guide books the cliffs at Burleigh Heads is the best place to watch sunset. They weren’t wrong.

As always, more photo’s like these on Flickr.

As soon as I get a job I’m going to have to invest in a decent camera. If I can capture scenes like this with a compact digital just think of the pictures we could have with a decent Digital SLR. I think we’ll definitely get our money’s worth out of it living here.