"Home Town" a Gold Coast Travel Page by goldcoaster

This is my home town. Not the place I was born which is on the other side of the world or the place I grew up but the place I choose to call home.

It is a tourism hotspot in Australia. Alot of people are surprised when I say where I live because the feeling is that not many people live here, that we are all just impermanent. But it is the sixth largest city in Australia and growing. It really is a great place to live. Some of the best beaches on the planet, 42 kilometres of golden fine grain sand, with world heritage listed rain forest only 30 mins away.

Sure it is tacky. Sure there are too many high rise buildings. Sure there are rip off real estate agents, those refugees from 1980s get rich quick schemes that the gullible still fall for. But we have the world's only Versace hotel. We have world class surfing, diving and fishing. We have polar bears and koalas. Theme parks and family picnic parks. That's why I love it. It is the extremes at both ends of the scale.

I drove taxis here for six years and in that time have seen almost everything this town has to offer. I've been in the best hotels and the trashiest dives. Have a guy leave $100 000 cash in my cab and found a lady dead in her car after ODing. Ask me anything and I'll give you a honest answer.

This a a photo from my front yard with the trees getting ready for the 4 weeks of winter.

We have lots of birds and other animals around here as well. This is a mating pair of mangrove kingfishers that nest in our backyard, much to the consternation of our cats who are too old to catch them.

Other avian visitors include a family of currawongs, rainbow lorikeets, cockatoos, galahs, a blue crane and a partridge in a pear tree. The prettiest would have to be the splendid blue wrens or the firetail wrens but getting photos of them is like nailing jelly to a wall.

This is a little butcherbird in our trees.