"It's amazing what you can do with a grape"

So it was back to the Gold Coast for a few more days before we were due to head north to Cairns and there was quite a bit that we wanted to fit in.

Dai had secretly arranged a tour for us of Queensland's wineries, so he had us up early on Wednesday morning to be picked up by Peter of Cork 'n' Fork Wine and Food Tours to take us into the hills of the Gold Coast Hinterland.

The basic plan appeared to be to do a tour of four wineries and a distillery. Now that's what I call a day out!

First stop was a winery whose office and reception area was actually the former governor's residence in Brisbane. Apparently a few years ago it was put up for auction and the winery's owners bought it. As it was a wooden building they were able to cut it into sections, put them on lorries and then transport them the 60 odd miles into the hills to be rebuilt on their land. Proper recycling.

The wine was pretty good, particularly a slightly sweet red wine called Poinciana that is served chilled, so we bought a bottle. It was here that the art of 'trilling' was explained to us. What you do is hold some wine in the front of your mouth, then breathe air in over the top of it, this is supposed to speed up the alcoholic effect, apparently this is something that wine experts do to assess quality. Sounds more like something a drunken bum would do to get howling quicker to me!!

Early morning drinker

After a quick stop at Witches Falls winery we went to Tamborine Mountain Distillery, where a mad old chap who looked like Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses was making alcohol out of anything he could get his hands on. He was handing out shots to try like it was nobody's business, it was a good job nobody was driving!

We had a very nice lunch and more wine tasting, then another wine tour before we were returned to Coolangatta. We decided that we'd give the Mexican restaurant downstairs a try that evening before going out for our music night and when we arrived the waitress took us out to the balcony. It was then that the Christmas beetle struck! This beetle which was about the size of a Cadbury's Creme Egg (Sarah's description) decided to attach itself to the bottom of the waitress' trousers. It kept hissing at us as we tried to remove it - apparently they bite - in the end she managed to remove it with the aid of a menu. We chose to eat inside.

When Sarah and I were in Melbourne we saw a poster advertising a Matt Costa concert in Coolangatta. Neither of us knew who he was or what his music was like, so we bought his CD then got some tickets so that we could all go along and see! Rather fortunately the venue for the concert was the Coolangatta Hotel, which is directly below Di and Dai's apartment block.

They knew we were coming

It wasn't very full and they were offering 2 for 1 tickets on the door, which wasn't a good sign. The support act turned out to be a surfer that I had heard of called Timmy Curran and he and his small band were very good, I would definitely go and see them again. Matt Costa had a much larger band and was OK, but when he said how pleased he and his band were to be there, it wasn't very convincing. Certainly his bassist didn't seem to know where he was!

My one's bigger than yours

We just relaxed and went to the beach on Thursday, but as this was a bit boring we decided that we'd go to Byron Bay on Friday. We got up early and headed down there, it's only about an hour from Coolangatta, so we were there quite early, but as we'd crossed the border into New South Wales we jumped forward an hour.

I had been looking forward to going to Byron Bay for some time as there is a surfboard shaper based there called Bob McTavish and he is a bit of a legend in the surfing world. I had also seen on his website that they hire some of their surfboards and we thought it would be good to hire a couple from there as they would be nicer than the usual hire boards. As we came to the outskirts of Byron Bay I spotted the shop and we pulled in. We walked into the showroom and were greeted by a young Australian guy who was looking after the shop. Hhe asked us where we were from - when we said Wales he proceeded to speak to us like we had never seen a surfboard before and didn't really belong in his shop! I was tempted to ask him which side the wax goes on and whether the fins were hand grips. Instead I asked about hiring some boards and he clearly didn't want to hire them to us, he said they were expensive ones and we'd be better off getting some in town, what a great salesman! One thing is for sure, he's made sure that I'll never buy a Bob McTavish surfboard. It's a strange attitude when you consider that Byron Bay is a real holiday place and 80% of the people that go into their shop must be tourists.

We then headed off to Byron Bay Longboards, where the guy was only too pleased to hire us a couple of boards and some bodyboards for the girls and we went off for a fun surf on the main beach.

That evening after dinner we were enjoying one of the bottles of wine we had picked up on our tour when Dai produced the quote of the trip so far, he said 'It's amazing what you can do with a grape'!! How right he was, although I think he may have consumed a few glasses of the grape product by this point.

Di was getting really fed up of telling Sarah to put the toilet seat down

Saturday was time to go to the Wet'n'Wild Theme Park, where we had a fantastic time on various rides. We went on the Mammoth Falls ride six times! Some things you never grow out of.

On Sunday night we had a farewell barbecue on the headland between Coolangatta and Kirra, it has a great view and free electric barbecues. We took a couple of bottles of wine and by the end of the evening Sarah, Diane and I had managed to empty more than a couple more. We were definitely going to have a hangover to start our journey north!