A FEW MORE DAYS CHILLING AT THE GOLD COAST....

After the kids all left we still had two more days at the Gold Coast...
Steve was supposed to be on leave, but he spent each morning doing school work.  Even though we were on leave, he was still getting emails from work, wanting things done.  I was feeling a little peeved by this, as the work load has been constant this past couple of years....  We rarely have a weekend to ourselves as he is constantly got deadlines on his mind, so therefore spends most weekends up at work or working at home trying to achieve them... The trouble is, once one lot is met, there are another pile sitting there waiting to be addressed.  It is unending at the moment and I am over it...  There should be a thing called work life balance and there is little of that at the moment...

Hence our last couple of days on the coast, the priority for Steve was trying to meet new deadlines imposed on him....  I am over it.... there is more to life than work... just got to convince him so.
The trouble is, it is family that suffer, and in the long run you get no thanks from work for all the extra time they require of you... and in the great scheme of things, if you left tomorrow, life would go on and you would be forgotten in three months...  Rant over.....

After lunch we decided to go for a drive down towards Coolangatta...  just checking out the beaches and reserves along the coast.... It was lovely... It has been a long time since we have done this...

 Just hanging to dip my feet into the sand...  and smell the ocean...
It is my happy and calm place.....

Endless beach

 What an amazing country we live in... beautiful beautiful beaches and not crowded with people...
I love this country we live in...

 We found this beach just near Burleigh Heads and this is where I enjoyed a short walk along the beach.... It was just nice to get out doors into the fresh air and listen to the waves rolling in along the shore...

From here we drove a little further along the coast to the other side of Currumbin Creek where we found this lovely little park area.  Even Jude got out of the car here and came and sat under a shelter shed....

 

 We continued our drive further along the coast towards Elephant Rock, although we stopped off just before that to go for a walk out along the beach to another pretty awesome rock.

What amazing birds these area.... captured just as she took flight....

 We were here just as the sun set....
What a beautiful time of day it is, and what splendour - the evening colours in the sky are quite breathtaking... I love to sit and watch a lovely sunset... It is one of the things I missed the most after we returned home from our lap around Australia...

We left here just after the sun set to continue our drive through to Coolangatta..
By the time we got to Elephant Rock, the sky was beautiful... lovely tints of pink and apricot across the night sky....

Elephant Rock...

 By the time we arrived in Coolangatta, it was too dark to take any more photos....  We decided to drive home via the Motorway as it was much quicker to get home that way.  Jude and I were having soup for dinner, but Steve felt like something a little more substantial, so we detoured via Red Rooster to pick him up a Classic Roast dinner....  It really was lovely to get out of the apartment...