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A group of friends from university decided a road trip to the Gold Coast would be a suitable way to celebrate finishing uni and the end of the year. Nine of us booked two rooms at the Silverton Apartments, about 10 minutes walk out of Surfer’s Paradise. We had great views from the apartment of both the beach to the east and the mountains to the west.

Greg, Katie, Steve, Julieanne & I shared one apartment while Thomas, Tomek, Emma Fitzgerald & her boyfriend Matt shared the other. It was a great group of people, mostly CompSci with a bit of Physics and Math. As a Music major Julieanne was worried she’d be left out, but she’s just as geeky as the rest of us and got on well with everybody :)

With 9 people we took 3 cars up, nobody wanted to be squished into the back of a car with three people for a 12 hour trip from Sydney to the Gold Coast. 7 of us were drivers, but 6 of those could only drive automatics and Greg’s car is a manual. So, he had the fun task of teaching Katie & I how to drive a manual a few days before we left. It was more difficult than I expected from playing Daytona at Timezone :) However, by the end of the trip I was at the point where I hardly stalled it at all!

On the first night we walked into town and had dinner at an ok restaurant that cost a lot. They refused to give us tap water and made us pay for bottles! Evil! Apparently having a liquor license in Queensland doesn’t require you to serve free water, unlike in NSW. We then walked back home along the beach, quite pretty at night time.

A bunch of us visited the beach one day. I sat on a towel reading Mindstar Rising and minded everybody’s things while they went swimming. I don’t particularly like swimming in the beach, too much sand. I do enjoy the view though :)

Katie & Julieanne made a sand mermaid, while Thomas and Steve attempted to write on the sand all the most important mathematical and physical equations for the benefit of future generations.

On Wednesday the group split into those who wanted to go to a theme park, namely Dreamworld, and those who didn’t. Having already visited Dreamworld several times I opted to give it a miss this time.

Emma, Matt, Steve and I then went bush walking around Mt Tamborine for a few hours instead.

Earlier that day Steve & I spent a few hours watching a show called Andromeda that Katie brought along on DVD. It’s a cheesy but fun scifi show, a bit like Star Trek but not. Interestingly they seem to attempt to make the physics more real, for example energy weapons don’t have a beam that travels slower than the speed of light. However the writers don’t seem to understand black holes particularly well. It also makes the classical mistake of sound transmitting through the vacuum of space. Still fun to watch though.

Later in the trip almost all of us went bush walking again. This time in the Lamington national park. It had fantastic views of a valley with a river winding through it. We also saw a little family of two wallabies while we were walking around.

We all went kayaking in the rivers nearby for about an hour. Had a great time, although it was quite tiring. I also forgot to put sunscreen on my legs and they got a nasty burn. Not as bad as Greg though.

For our last day Emma had organised horse riding for all of us. It was the first time I’d been on a horse before and I had a great time. At first I was worried about the smell, but you quickly get used to it.

We had a 3 hour walk around with a short stop in the middle to rest near a creek. There wasn’t really much we had to do for the horses, they all just followed the experienced leaders in front. A couple of times they needed a bit of a kick to get going again though, and they were constantly trying to slow down and snack on bits of plants along the way. My horse had a sore eye and tried to rub it on his leg. As soon as I loosened the reins a little to let him rub his eye more comfortably he jumped straight for the grass! Clever horse :)

The fastest we ever got to was a horse trot, which was fairly jarring because I wasn’t experienced enough to move with the horse. I ended up just bouncing rather uncomfortably on the saddle!

The whole trip was lots of fun. It was great spending time with all my friends, especially as I’ll not be seeing as much of them all this year. Thanks for a great time everyone!