Best things to do in Queensland on a family holiday. Photo / Shannonstent
All too often we regard a Gold Coast holiday as a kid-pleaser, but there’s plenty here to keep adults enthralled too – most of them unknown, writes Tim Roxborogh
“Hi Daddy!” comes the joyful cry from above as our 4-year old daughter Riley flies past on a 185m-long zipline, deep in some of Queensland’s most remarkable rainforest. Not long ago she was nervous riding the 20m zipline at Tui Glen in West Auckland, so this is a euphoric, defining moment. It also sums up so much of what this trip is all about: my wife and I wanting to take our children to the Gold Coast for an easy family winter escape where sure, we’d do the beaches and the theme parks, but get some discovering and exploring in too. And in the process, create a whole bunch of new memories.
READ MORE: What to do on the Gold Coast after you’re done with the beach
“Been there, haven’t done that,” is Destination Gold Coast’s new slogan, and given well over 400,000 Kiwis visit “The GC” every year but often do little beyond Surfers Paradise and those famous theme parks, it’s time to peel back the layers of just how much there’s to see in this corner of Australia. So if the New Zealand winter is getting you down, you could do worse than recreate our week of blue skies on the GC that culminated in Riley’s zip-lining glories. Here’s how it went down:
Air New Zealand flies direct to Gold Coast Airport in Coolangatta and in a little over three hours you’ll swap grey, wet, windy days for sunshine and temperatures that even in the middle of winter still reach the low 20Cs. That two-hour time difference is on your side too, with a midday touchdown giving you plenty of daylight to ease into your holiday.
Speaking of which, if you’ve ever travelled with children, you’ll know the last thing you want to do is have a big drive straight after an international flight. With that in mind, less than 10-minutes from the airport, we’d changed into shorts and T-shirts and were eating karaage chicken salads from the Dune Café overlooking the Currumbin Lagoon. The natural setting would’ve been enough, but throw in a swish pirate-themed playground and this was the ideal spot for the kids – including 10-month-old baby Austin – to free the legs.
The next destination was the neighbouring 27ha Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. It’s no exaggeration to say the heavily forested Currumbin is among the absolute elite of all zoos in Australasia, particularly renowned for its conservation and animal welfare programmes. The on-site Currumbin Wildlife Hospital even allows visitors to safely observe treatments for sick, injured or endangered species. Some 15,000 animals every year are tended to at the hospital.
As for the Sanctuary itself, it’s hard to pick a favourite when there’s everything from koalas to kangaroos, capybaras to cassowaries, and red pandas to red-tailed lemurs, and all in spacious enclosures replicating the wild. Add to that a rainforest playground, a mini waterpark and an “Extinction Trail” with life-size dinosaurs, and any tiredness from an early start and an international flight is briefly forgotten. You’re also left in little doubt as to why this 75-year-old park is still picking up some of the biggest tourism gongs in Australia, including “Best Major Tourism Attraction” in Queensland every year since 2021.
After farewelling the creatures at Currumbin, we made our way north past Surfers Paradise and onto a marina right next to the former Palazzo Versace Hotel (rebranded in 2023 as The Imperial). And there they were: two 1970s fishing trawlers completely done up, joined together, and floating in the calm waters with their new name in neon: Holy Ship Bar & Restaurant. In operation since autumn, the name might be light-hearted, but Holy Ship’s seafood-dominated menu of oysters, bugs and prawns is anything but. We dined on top-deck and watched the sun sink into the sea, with silhouetted boat masts jostling against the skyscrapers.
The right kind of knackered, we then drove the 15-minutes south back past Surfers Paradise to check-in to our home for our first four nights, Encore Broadbeach. A 25-storey tower just back from the sand and waves of the Pacific Ocean and with the obligatory stunning views, our two-bedroomed apartment at Encore came with a full kitchen and laundry, a port-a-cot and high-chair for Austin, as well as access to a lap pool, sauna and spa.
After a sunrise beach stroll, day two was always going to be all about Movie World. A 30-minute drive north, it’s impossible to overstate the excitement for Riley of going to massive theme-park like Movie World for the first time. There’s a wide-eyed wonder and joy that you want to bottle, and even with the big rollercoasters too much for a 4-year-old and the $40 million new Wizard Of Oz section not yet complete, we had a cup-filling day of rides and treats and alarming amounts of candyfloss. We capped things off with a swim and takeaways back at Encore and felt very grateful.
If anyone you’re travelling with has any outdated notions of the GC somehow lacking in culture, take them to HOTA. An acronym for “Home Of The Arts”, HOTA is a multimillion-dollar arts precinct with a striking Voronoi-styled art gallery that prides itself on showcasing indigenous artists. Just three years old, HOTA includes a new outdoor amphitheatre, tranquil parklands and a rooftop restaurant some locals insist has the best skyline views in all of Queensland.
Riley did a children’s arts-and-crafts programme and rose to the occasion of being the full-volume, loud-laughing focal point of the interactive Italian Renaissance Alive exhibition by running over the ever-changing, gigantic floor-lit projections of some of Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest hits. This is what happens when you take a 4-year-old to an art gallery as stimulating as this and we left as proud parents.
After a lunch on that spectacular roof, it was then time for the GC institution that is Aquaduck with Riley beaming when she got her certificate for steering the amphibious vehicle for a couple of minutes around the waterways and mansions of the GC. Jackie Chan’s colossal holiday house was a personal fave.
The closest Australia gets to Disneyland is the still-make-it-a-must-do, 42-year-old, 85ha Dreamworld. Incorporating a zoo and a waterpark as well as the dry-land theme-park that made its name, Dreamworld offers so many different rides – almost 50 – that we never felt like the queues were too much, even with two kids in tow. Riley adored the Wiggles-themed rides, but was almost as enthralled merely by taking everything in, be it the oversized ice-creams and of course – candyfloss – or the animals of the Corroboree and Tiger Island areas. The giant Lego store you exit out of was just the icing on the cake of a brilliant day out.
Slightly further north than Movie World, we were back for a final night at Encore Broadbeach.
No apologies need be made for embracing the Gold Coast’s most talked about, most-visited attractions, but if you’re going to the GC and not venturing into that hinterland, you’re missing so much of the story. Like the comedy-matched-with-serenity of walking with the alpacas at the Mountview Alpaca Farm, just under an hour inland from Broadbeach.
Located in the Canungra Valley and doubling as a vineyard, we were joined by Ernie and Cookie – two of the farm’s 50 docile alpacas – as we strolled around the idyllic riverside setting. Topped off with a picnic lunch and wine-tasting, this was wholesome family fun and lots of it.
Then it was back to the car for another hour-or-so where the landscape abruptly shifted from more sparse, dry, monocultural forest, to a thick tangle of oversized, biodiverse rainforest. Our destination was the 98-year O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat and there’s a case to be made that this triumphant launchpad to Lamington National Park is Australia’s original eco-lodge.
Staying in a villa perched on stilts, enveloped by almost Southeast Asian-looking jungle, the setting from the private spa on our deck immediately rocketed O’Reilly’s right up near the top of my all-time favourite hotels. With a conservation-meets-education ethos encompassing interactive wildlife shows and tours, a world-leading suspended walkway in the forest, an excellent on-site restaurant, and access to a network of safe, relatively easy, frequently jaw-dropping trails, and O’Reilly’s needs to be on your list.
Enveloped by the World Heritage-listed, 206km sq Lamington National Park, O’Reilly’s is also the place where our dear 4-year-old overcame her very understandable nerves to repeatedly ride a zip-line almost the length of two rugby fields. The courage this took and the confidence it’s given her is the stuff Gold Coast holidays deserve to be made of. That and those theme parks. And beaches. And candyfloss.
GETTING THERE
Fly non-stop from Auckland to Gold Coast Airport in approximately 3 hours and 40 minutes with both Air NZ and Jetstar.
DETAILS
Viking’s cruise brings Europe to your balcony..