Airlie Beach is a busy little place eh darls. The one main street is jammed with hostels, holiday apartments, tour operators, cafes and even a beauty salon or two where we indulged in a little TLC! I (SM) also allowed the tresses to be chopped (just a trim please… whoa, whoa. whoa, just a trim please! But of course, a bit more than a trim was taken….you know how it goes girls….). Apart from wanting to pamper ourselves after a few days in the rainforest and overnighter bus, it was also as misty as Dingle on a day in June so we kinda had nothing else to do mate! Our accommodation at “Koalas” was basic to say the least, so we were happy to spend little time there. Plenty of good cafes and touristy shops to take our cash anyway…
Up at the dawn on Wednesday for our three day sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands. We thought we had lucked out in Cairns when the boat we wanted was booked up. When we first saw our Tall-Ship “Defender”, we thought it didn’t look so ‘tall” but did we change our minds once we were out at sea, watching the sails go up over the cobalt sea. It was fab. The ship is the oldest commercial sailing boat in the southern hemisphere and can sleep 24 people on board . They allow 12 people to camp on one of the island: we weren’t exactly volunteering for that opportunity knowing that (a) there is sand and dubious ablution facilities involved and (b) we have to do the beach camp thing on Fraser Island, so why max it?!
Day one was spent getting out to Hook Island, snorkelling and diving around there – sailing past a few of the other islands. Day two was the rockiest wave wise, so most of the time was spent on deck trying to focus on the horizon and not on our queasy stomachs. The main aim of day two was to get to a beach called Whitehaven on Whitsunday Island proper. Whitehaven has the finest silica sand on the planet and is also one of the most photographed beaches anywhere. It was certainly stunning, but rather brisk and rainy at times (SM and MF are finding it hard to get used to 20C after all that SE Asia heat!!). Of course, the beach on the other island across the way had the sun on it the entire time, of course it did eh!! Day three started off lovely and sunny, perfect for our beach (coral beach, ouchee to walk on!) and snorkelling sojourn on an island called Hayman (also site of one of the top 10 resorts in the world apparently – 500 guests / 600 staff!!). The number of fish in the water was amazing; there is a resident called Elvis, a huge purple/green Wrasse fish – certainly the biggest fish we’ve seen so far, eh dolls!
We landed back at Airlie Beach around 3pm on Friday afternoon and pretty much headed straight to fight a laundry war with other likeminded people – it nearly broke into fisty cuffs around the dryers at one point! That evening, we met up with most of the people from Defender – each boat holds a table at one of the bigger bars. Strangely enough, it came down to the (mostly) large number of Irish Defender passengers to keep the party going until the wee small hours.
Saturday evening saw us take another overnighter to Hervey Beach – this time 13 hours. Again, mixed sleep quality experiences. Hervey Beach is the jumping point for Fraser Island which we head to at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Australia may well be the country where we get least sleep!!
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