Some more on our visit to the Sunshine Coast...

Readers in Australia would know the name, Clive Palmer. For those who have never heard of him, he is an Australian mining magnate who claims to be a billionaire. He is well known for 'splashing his cash' around on grand schemes. 

More recently, he has formed his own political party and in the last federal election, a number of the Palmer United Party candidates won seats in the federal parliament's Senate. Now Clive himself also stood as a candidate here in Queensland, in the seat of Fairfax, (House of Reps) . On the first count in the September 7 election it would appear that Clive won the seat (by a tiny amount) but a recount is still in progress and it still appears that Clive is the winner by a narrow margin but until the recount is complete he won't be declared the winner in the seat. Clive's scrutineers slowed down the original count by challenging validity of ballot papers and this challenging has continued with the recount...note the election was September 7 so that's quite a while for the people of the electorate to be without a representative... but that's enough of the politics...Clive bought a resort (Hyatt Coolum) at Coolum on the Sunshine Coast and renamed it...yep! Palmer Coolum Resort...DH and I decided we just had to go and have a bit of a 'sticky beak'! lol 

Looks like this is the place...

We travelled up the side road until we came to the resort's entrance...

 Yes! Your eyes do not deceive you; that is a billboard showing Titanic 2. You see Clive is spending millions having a replica built of the original Titanic. It is being built in China. DH has said that it can't be an exact replica as no one would pay to travel in steerage like the poorer people on the original, and I think I agree with him. Lol

The sign promises 'fantastic food'!

Ah here we are; this is what we came to see. Jeff the Dinosaur! This is on the resort's golf course and has had mixed reactions (mainly adverse)especially from players in the Australian PGA last year. This comp was played there last year as it the original Hyatt Coolum had a contract to stage the event up until 2012. The PGA didn't obviously renew the contract; I wonder why???? Any way getting back to Jeff; apparently he is the first of many dinosaurs that Clive plans to purchase as he wants to create a type of Jurassic Park attraction at the resort. I did say he loves to think up grand plans...

Jeff was getting a bit of maintenance when we drove in...

 We then drove into the carpark to turn around ...and look what was parked there!

We took another photo of Jeff as we drove back towards the front entrance. The men have obviously finished and lowered the 'cherry-picker'. This photo also shows how close to the green Jeff is.

 DH did say that he read/heard that Jeff is able to move/roar etc as he has animatronics...we were lucky, the staff could have 'set Jeff on us' for driving through to have a 'look see'. :-)

 Later in the day we were at Sunshine Plaza Shopping Centre (looking for men's shorts for DH) when I saw this number plate on the vehicle parked in front of us. Just couldn't resist taking a photo.
Ha ha! It turned into a 'selfie' with that shiny bumper bar!

Hmmm that accidentally turned out to be quite an interesting photograph...