Liz and Frank: views and history

Sunday 4th July, was an outstanding day here, the skies were clear, the sun was shining, and there was a little "winter" nip in the air - which would have been great for the 24,000 runners in the Gold Coast Marathon. It is the flattest marathon in the world, and according to their media, that makes it the fastest!!!. The map below shows the route for the 42 klms, there were also smaller runs - Sue ran the 10 klm within the hour on Saturday.

The start of the race on yesterday

En route

The Winners - a Trifecta from Japan in the womens, and a trifecta from Kenya in the mens - where are the "aussies"???.

Well, the sedate ones (below) travelled south of the race route to Kirra Beach, and then walked to Coolangatta beach and back- just delightful.

There is a headland dividing these 2 beaches, which has a large sculpture of an Eagle standing high and ogling out to sea - fitting for us, reminding us of our great friends, our god children and Jack and David on Independence Day in the US of A. Anyway we decided to go to the top - maybe we could see a whale or two from this headland..

No whales spied by us, but a lovely look at Kirra Beach from the high ground.

and also across Coolangatta to Greenmount Beach

We then travelled around to Marine Parade, and stopped and watched (forever) the surfers playing in the beauty of Rainbow Bay.

Then further on to Pt. Danger below - Cook Island (Captain Cook) sits out to sea. Maybe we could see a whale from here.

Overlooking Duranbah beach - the surfers love this one too!

We walked around the Pt. Danger headland - the Park is called the "Centaur" Memorial Park - which remembers the sinking of the Australian Hospital Ship "Centaur" by a Japanese submarine off the Queensland coast on 14th May, 1943. We strolled along the "Walk of Rememberance" - where there were plaques arranged in a semi circle around the lookout fence -they were commemorating the American and Australian ships which were attacked by both the Japanese and the Germans in WW11 in Australian waters.

We stopped to read most of them - photos of just 3 below.

The one above was in Northern Australia, and below in the seas south of Victoria.

This one below was attacked just north of Batemans Bay on Christmas Day, 1944.

Captain Cook has a memorial in the form of a Lighthouse here as well! In fact I have read that this was the first lighthouse to play with "lazer technology" (in 1971)