On the water

It was such a beautiful day today that I loaded my camera into the car and headed off in the direction of "The Spit" which is a narrow neck of land stretching out into the Pacific Ocean and on which is located the Southport Yacht Club, the prawn fleet, Seaworld and a couple of very expensive hotels.
My main purpose was to take photographs of flags in different situation - this is one of the topics for this month for the Visions Group. Since there was a strong breeze blowing any flags I found were flipping around at a great rate of knots! I needed a very high shutter speed to get them!
I am not going to share the flags with you, instead I am going to show you a few shots I took while looking for them.

Oops! A flag slipped in! The buildings in the background are Southport. Usually when high rise buildings are shown on the Gold Coast they are of the ones in Surfers Paradise. Southport is a suburb adjacent to and north of Surfers Paradise. Southport is considered to be the CBD of the Gold Coast while Surfers Paradise is the tourism hub. There are not as many tall buildings in Southport as there are in Surfers Paradise - but no doubt that will change over the years!

Here is a different way to explore the Gold Coast. I have caught one of the Helitours just leaving from its floating pontoon with a well dressed passenger in the front seat. The tall building at the back is a shopping centre and office block. Three floors of the Australia Fair building are shopping centre and four are car parking. The Australia Fair (Scarborough Fair originally) was first opened in 1983 and is still a vibrant and popular place to shop.

It was so pleasant rambling around the Marina along the Quay that I was often tempted to take photographs - on a sunny day like this the place looks magnificent! Of course, the large and luxurious water craft along this main walkway are on display to be sold. Several different marine brokers have strings of beautiful boats moored here.

I would love to know more about this iron boat. It sits solidly on the water beside smaller bouncy, white luxury craft and has no pretence at beauty. What is the purpose of the projection at the front? I wonder. There was no one I could ask, just a couple of other people passing the time like me and they knew even less than I did!
AJ