Australia Trip 3rd Day: Gold Coast

In the morning, after some brush-ups, preparations and a bowl of Korean instant Ramee (beef flavoured) I went to the beach again. This time it rained for a longer time and the beach is empty. Why? Because everyone is working. Only tourists and schoolchildren went.

The beach was full of seagulls. Many of them. There were two Japanese women feeding the seagulls and tens to hundreds of seagulls surrounded her and followed at the back of her. Haha they're so cute. I also saw some seagulls sleeping. Do you know how they sleep? It's quite special: the seagull raises one of her leg backwards, and hide it underneath her body. Then her head will make a 180 turn sideways and looks back at her body. Then she'll close her eyes and sleep. So what I saw was a bird standing with one leg and her head turned sideways, backwards.

Flying a kite.

足迹。

A school of seagulls.

The waves.

When you're just right in front of it, it'll seem like an avalanche.

It's a woman surfing.

Surf.

It's her again.

The sleeping birds.

Deep in their dreams.

Some stood with one leg, some two.

Surfing lesson.

Bananas.

Warming up.

 

Hundreds of 'em.

Following people.

Their queue is straighter than we form 5s'.

The birds flied up whenever the women gave them foods.

The birds actually caught and ate the foods in mid-air. Look how skilled they are.

After taking some photos and videos I went to the sea again. Today the sea water was still the same ice-cold as yesterday. But one thing is different: the wave today was humongous. The seabed somehow got sculpted by the waves yesterday night- some parts of it were deep and some part shallow. But the water level was still up to my chest nonetheless. The wave today kept on pushing me backwards, this time to the right side of the two-coloured flag.

The waves today were really strong and powerful- especially when it breaks. The power it exerts is really great. Once I got twisted, rolled, pulled, and dragged downwards and backwards for a long long distance. There were more, a lot more huge waves today. The highest wave I've ever seen measures about 2.5 metres high and it is so overwhelming. I've never felt to powerless before. I'm simply a powerless toy in front of the waves. The waves often pushed me back and continued to do so right after I managed to stood up.

The waves today carried strong undercurrents. Really strong one. Since waves transfer energy but not displacement (as tsunami does), thus after the water was displaced it must be replaced again. And since the waves today was strong, the undercurrents that flowed back to replace the water were also strong. I was dragged and pulled powerfully by the wave towards the crest of the wave- and in many cases to where the waves were breaking, where the water was rolling and smashing down, loud and powerful. There number of gigantic waves today made today even more fun than yesterday.

The water here is crystal clear. When a wave surges up high, the water is blue, azure coloured. Even when the tide is high the seabed is still very clear. Sometimes the waves would surge suddenly and broke down in a matter of seconds. The wave far out the sea seems to be relatively calm, but just so suddenly, when I realized that a wave is coming, it smashes down. They grew very fast in seconds and always, surged up and broke right in front of me. And I'll be pushed backwards, sometimes into the water. The height, sound, and appearance of the waves made me scared to tummy-surf like I did yesterday. I tried to surf for a few times but ended up being smashed onto the seabed (and twisted and turned and bla bla bla).

I noticed that many people actually swam into the big waves to pass along it. There was this group of girls that swam to the far side of the sea (it's still very shallow there) and dived into every wave that came. And most of the time they dived into the sea (since of the sea walls were almost vertical at the point of breaking, they just moved in horizontally) while the waves were going to break. The waves today carried a lot of energy. When they broke, they splashed very violently and loudly. It's just like an avalanche.

Sometimes I tummy-surfed along with the huge waves and I could feel the strong turbulence at my back where the wave is breaking (I swam in the middle of the breaking waves). If I were to swam with my head in the spinning turbulence, I would get knocked onto the seabed again. There were a few times when the wall of water surged up high to the point of breaking right in front of me. It's like watching some National Geographic "natural disasters TV program". The wall came smashing down and it was higher than me by a metre or so. I felt like it was gobbling me, eating up me with its big large "mouth". Then it did.

Weird pool rules: NO BOMBING.

In the evening we joined our resort's party and had dinner with many of the people that stayed here. There was a Chinese family from Melbourne that originally lived in Hong Kong. The son of the family who is 20 years old this year moved to Australia at an age of 4 years old. The daughter moved here since 3 years old. Her name is Emily. I tell ya, she is really pretty. She's so sweet, lovely, beautiful, charming, and and, er, je ne sais quoi, je ne sais quoi! Oh how lovely she is. Hahaha. Oh ya, Australians can drive at an age of 16! She actually drove during the journey from Melbourne to Gold Coast. Cool.

At night I bought two books: The Machiavelli Covenant by Allan Folsom (author of The Day After Tomorrow) and Blizzard (based on a TV series, BBC Books) by Jasper Rees. The two books are really cheap- their total price is not even 50 MYR. I'm now reading Blizzard (but you know, when travelling, you weren't left with much time for your books).

Just when we got out of the shopping mall, there was this person performing publicly to earn money. He rode a very high single wheeled cycle and played with 3 knives while riding the cycle. It's quite impressive. Then we met another person performing indigenous music with a special instrument. he dressed up like an aborigine and the instrument is special: it's just a wooden tube. Just a wooden tube, nothing more. The tube has a diameter of 7 to 8 cm and a length of 1.2 to 1.4 meter. The sound is deep and resonant, I could even heard it from far away.

Okay here's for today. It had been great.