Day 8 - #Thatchersontour - Gold Coast

On the way back from the beach yesterday, we spotted a huge outlet mall so after a late breakfast we went there for a spot of shopping. A couple of hours later, with the Thatcher's laden down with lots of pairs of trainers and some hats, we headed to the beach. Before the beach we stopped off at a 'It's a knockout style' giant inflatable on the ocean. I didn't fancy it so I lay in the sun with my kindle whilst Simon, Tom and Lucy bounced around for an hour. They said it was pretty hard going clambering around all the bits and we did catch the occasional glance of Simon and Tom pulling Lucy out of the water by her life jacket, but they had lots of fun. They ended up coming out 5 minutes early as Tom cut his foot however I think they were glad of the excuse as they were all pretty pooped!

Even after all that exertion they still wanted to hire a surfboard and go surfing so we headed to the main beach in Southport in search of some waves and a surfboard. Unfortunately we couldn't find anywhere to hire a board so we opted for a coffee break at the beachside cafe instead. Mandy tried her first Lamington (an Aussie cake) as seen on many episodes of Neighbours.

We then stopped off at a more sheltered beach where we saw some paddle boards for hire (I seriously don't know where they get their energy from) however as the wind had picked up it would have been a full body workout to keep yourself from ending up in Sydney so they settled for a swim and sunbathe instead.

When we got back to Sanctuary Cove it was dusk and perfect kangaroo spotting time so we took Mandy and Kevin to where we saw them before. There were probably around 20 kangaroos hopping around and we managed to get a great video of a joey hopping in and out of his mums pouch!Read more