Travel By Photo – Gold Coast Hinterland, Australia

Still remember the travel photo quiz above that was posted some times ago? Yes. Here is the answer. This photo was taken on top of Mt. Tamborine, part of the Gold Coast Hinterland Australia! Though I visited there quite a few years ago, the memory still remained fresh on the sweet experience of the travel. Perhaps we travelled to Gold Coast by self-travel style, the enjoyment we had experienced could never be compared by those who has been there by packaged travel.

The Hinterland of Gold Coast covers the inland suburbs areas of highlands stretching across Gold Coast, sunshine Coast to Brisbane, rain forest featuring the famous skywalks on trees, greeneries  with ranges of tea farms and vineyards, villages with handicraft shops,, boutiques, restaurants, coffee and tea houses, wineries and off course resorts and B&B.

Gold Coast Hinterland is so interesting to travellers because with only 1/2 hour drive from Surfers Paradise, travellers could experience a totally different aspect of Gold Coast. From beaches of Gold Coast to highlands of Hinterland, from city to village lifestyle and also from hot and sunny to cool and breezy weather.

The first stop we went was Mt. Tamborine, which is 584m above sea water level and it is the famous spot for parachutting. The photo supposed to be a perfect shot without my brother in-law… 🙁 One top of the mountain one could oversee the breathtaking farms and even Gold Coast beaches at far end!

There are many popular travelers’ attractions in town of Mt. Tamborine such as handicrafts, arts, boutiques and also highland tea. Since we were on our own and had planned to spend one whole day in Hinterland, we decided to park our car along the main road and walked from one end to the other for souvenirs!

We had our morning tea at one of the “externally-look-great” tea house and had a few scones (though we couldn’t have our 1st cigarrette there as smoking already been banned in the public area in Australia) 🙁

As a newly married couple at that time a few years ago, sweet smile is always guaranteed on her face…

Right after that, we shop from 1 to another to look for great handicrafts. I found these ceramic tile paintings to be great for my souvenir to my brother!

Let’s take a picture of these expensive artworks since we could own them…. 🙂

Nice to see, fun to hold, once broken, consider sold!

I love this photo of the clock shop exterior. Those colours and lighting are simply awesome!

My wife loved these antique clocks, I loved her boobs instead! (Oops! Sorry mdm…)

Aiya! We should have tried this coffee shop instead for my morning coffee… I found that I prefered coffee than tea. 🙁

Both of these sisters love long than short… witnessed this…

Just in time for the wine tasting session…

One of the famous products from Hinterland is wine. Mount Tamborine winery is one of them.

Pretending to be an expert, I was selecting one of the Shiraz but…

After lunch at one of the restaurant, we drove further in and up to Canungra area to visit one of the vineyard.

Thought it was quite near to Canungra, we drove further to look for the heritage rainforest site in Lamington National Park, the O’Reilly. But it was not the case if you see the map of O’Reilly. It almost drive me crazy to reach there… and our car’s petrol gauge didn’t look great either. 🙁

The only thing I wanted to explore here was this skywalk, a hanging bridge on top of the giant rainforest trees which could only take the load of 6 people…

One could further climb up to the top of the trees, it wasn’t me…

There were name tags on each of every wooden planks of the skybridge. Are they the donors or the builders? I have no clue…

Not many foreigners go there which I think because of its distance from Gold Coast (I found out this only when we spent so much petrol to reach there and it’s already too late. We still needed the same amount of petrol to drive back to Gold Coast) 🙁

A little bit of a consolation, we found some lorikeets around…

After a long distance drive and before another long distance drive home, we had a cup of coffee and few sticks of cigarrettes. The sun already started to fall.

Click here to view lightbox of these photos in flikcr

O’Reilly is best to stay for a night to admire the serenity and cool environment but not for day visit. It is just too far away from town, almost 2 hours drive! (maybe there is another shortcut route that we didn’t know…). When we reached Gold Coast’s Surfers’ Paradise, it was already at night, and our petrol gauge lit! Nevertheless, it was still a great day tour with full of funs and experience. For those of you who wants to know how we planned our trip to Gold Coast, read my Trip to Gold Coast. The best way to not missing any part of my travel stories is to subscribe Travel Feeder’s RSS feed for free update. – Travel Feeder.