outtahere
GOLDEN
he kids vigilantly counted down the sleeps until our trip to the Gold Coast, waking every morning and wishing it was the morning they'd been dreaming
about. We'd promised them three days of theme parks and fun, hoping we'd also get some time to ourselves after they conked out. It didn't turn out exactly like that, but holidays are never really what you expect, are they? The youngest, aged five, had been telling
everyone who'd listen that he was going to: 1. Pat a dolphin; 2. Go on scary rides; 3. Stay in a hotel made for kids; and 4. Go to a restaurant where he could eat everything, and as much as he wanted. He wasn't far off the mark…
1. PATTING A DOLPHIN We couldn't resist Sea World, where you can stand knee-deep on a ledge at the side of an enormous dolphin enclosure and one of the resident bottlenose dolphins hangs out with you, putting on a show. Sirius, a 20-year-old dolphin, does a superb job of showing off. He 'stands up' in front of us, all 250 kilos of him supported by his tail, so we can take turns at shaking his flipper, which, interestingly, contains bones that resemble a human hand. He glides past us slowly so we can take turns stroking his soft-as-silk belly and back, at one stage coming to a complete halt before us so we can feel the strength of his tail. He claps for us by splashing his tail in the water, nods when the animal trainer makes jokes, and talks like a dolphin, high-pitched, happy Flipper noises blurting from his blowhole. We all feed fish to Sirius, and the trainer asks him to open his snout to show his 88 teeth and his thick
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COASTER T
IT HAS TO BE DONE: HIGH-RISES, SCARY RIDES AND DOLPHINS ON THE GOLD COAST. MICHELLE HESPE FITS THE ESSENTIALS IN, AND A LOT MORE.
