I had to fly through Auckland which nicely made me go back through security and took all my stuff apart needlessly

As soon as I landed, I had a bit of extra time before the the Springbrook NP, so I took my luggage in an uber directly to nearby Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary to spend a couple of hours. It was my 3rd time there, but still fun to see:

animal hospital

Next, I took my luggage to my Gold Coast hotel and got picked up by my half day Springbrook NP tour. The views were not fantastic due to the light smoke in the air, but the air was actually much better than most of Australia that was being ravaged by fire. Still, the NP was nice:

some bats happily sleeping there

I always carry seeds for a good reason :)

the best viewpoint in the world was not stellar due to the air

The next day, I went to Dreamworld, a combined amusement/water park, which was worth 1.5 days. It's a weird mix of amusement park, animal park, and water park:

first time with a tree kangaroo, they are normally not very social

good climbers

I got copiously yelled at for daring to take/use my camera on this ride

that's a bigger cat than I'd play with myself :)

They had a good section on haborigenes and their cultures:

they have a story of a creation snake

The next day, I went back for Whitewater World, the water section of the park, and worked on getting better at the wave thing. It was much harder than it seems, but I got a bit better at it:

most of the time that is :)

The rest of the water park was quite nice too

I had a half day left after the water park, so I went back to Holoverse and tried their other games:

We had been to the gold coast twice already, so there wasn't too much that I hadn't seen yet:

I tried expensive wagyu in a highly rated steak restaurant, and it was not melt in your mouth despite the very steep price

Just like last time, they have a little street market, which I went to visit:

I had a free ticket to go to the observatory again, so I did: