Only a 30-minute drive inland from Surfers Paradise is a lush, subtropical hinterland of rainforests, vines and waterfalls, a weird Jurassic-like world populated with 2,000-year-old trees, glow worms, bioluminescent mushrooms and strange creatures such as the platypus (an egg-laying mammal unique to Australia) and pademelon (a small forest dwelling wallaby).
The modest life turns out to encompass houses in Berkshire and Chelsea and one 'little modest villa near Marbella'... and, by the way, a small rainforest hotel, Bloomfield Lodge, and a small airline, Hinterland Aviation, both in Australia.
Consideration also should be given to the particular tastes of Brazil's many postmodern "style tribes" in its sprawling cities and the distinct lifestyles among the residents of semi-arid deserts of the interior and the lush hinterland between cattle country and the rainforest.
At weekends, many locals escape the city for the rainforests, waterfalls, wineries and lookout points of the hinterland.
She became slowly absorbed into the small community of servants and their families and the sharecroppers and peasant farmers that existed around the house; became happily accustomed to the astonishing fecundity of the rainforest and the makeshift necessities of living in the hinterland of a rackety third-world country.
The Gold Coast hinterland offers over 260km of bush walking tracks through world heritage-listed rainforest, many lined with rock pools, waterfalls and glow worms.
Serious hikers gravitate to Springbrook National Park and Lamington National Park in the hinterland's south, where hiking trails delve into Australia's ancient Gondwana rainforests, a canopied world of filtered light and dappled greens alive with strangler figs, epiphytes and curling vines.
In the far southwest of the hinterland, Lamington National Park is a Unesco World Heritage Site and protects the largest area of undisturbed subtropical rainforest remaining in southeast Queensland.
HINTERLAND By Caroline Brothers.
