Crabs, Tropical Fruit and
a Mountain!
We’re on the road!
After picking the van up in Brisbane last Friday, we headed
to Virgin Blue Headquarters for a couple of photos with Hamish & Adam (the
Vantastic Qld. team) and some of the Virgin staff.
We spent the next couple of days in Brisbane and on the Gold
Coast, catching up with some friends and testing out the waterslides at Wet
& Wild. Then it was a (very)
short drive into NSW!
Mount Warning
We heard that Mount Warning was the highlight of the Tweed
Heads area, so we headed to Mount Warning Holiday Park and parked Geoff right next to a rainforest for the night! The park is in an amazing area, right near the mountain.
The next morning, we woke bright and early to climb the
mountain. The sign at the bottom described the degree of climbing difficulty as
“strenuous” and for “experienced climbers only.” That description definitely doesn’t fit us, but we were
determined to give it a go. The
walk is amazing, with the greenery of the rainforest shading you from the sun
for most of the way (although it does get a bit humid). We saw a lot of different wildlife –
birds (especially brush turkeys), lizards, and even a snake (just a small one)!
The climb can be tough in parts, and the last 200 metres or
so is a steep "rock scramble," where you have to pull yourself up along a
chain. We stuck it out though, and
arrived very proud at the top, only to have a seven-year-old girl arrive with
her family only minutes later! Very
impressive.
It took us around 6 hours (including breaks and a stop up
the top) to cover the 9km return journey, and we’re a little sore today, but
the views and the feeling of achievement are worth it. Mt. Warning used to be a volcano, and is also the first place in
Australia to see the sunrise!
Tropical Fruit World
On the way back into Tweed Heads, we saw a sign for Tropical
Fruit World, and were curious as to what it could possibly be, so we stopped by. It turns out that it’s a fruit farm and
research centre, and they have 516 different kinds of fruit growing on the
property (more than anywhere else in the world)!
They have fruit tasting shows, where you get to sample all
different kinds of fruit (including a chocolate fruit) that they mixed with
icecream, and they also have various park tours and other attractions.
We stayed the night at Pyramid Holiday Park, which has sparkling clean facilities, and provides for your every need. They even had a
cards night last night, and the long-term residents' gnome gardens are well worth a look!
Catch a Crab Tours
This morning we did a fantastic trip out on the Tweed River
with Catch a Crab. Neither of us had any real interest in
fishing or crabs beforehand, but we had a fantastic time!
You get to spend an entire morning out on the gorgeous Tweed
River, and everything you do is a hands-on experience. We fed pelicans over the side of the
boat, used a hand pump to draw yabbies out of the riverbed, pulled crab traps
out of the river and tried our hand at fishing. Didn’t manage to catch any fish, but our trap had a great
big crab inside.
They cooked the crabs we caught right on the boat, and we
had a delicious lunch back at the dock.
Dayle and Michelle seemed to know everything there was to know about crabs, and we
learnt some interesting new facts (including that female crabs can lay up to 80
million eggs at a time, but only around 50 will make it past the first few days
without being eaten).
That’s it for the Tweed Heads area… stay tuned for our next
NSW adventure!
