Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands

Airlie Beach itself was crap. The only reason why anyone would be there is that it's the closest place to the Whitsundays. We got down there and had to wait a few hours to before check in opened at our hostel. We stayed at Koalas, which was just as bad a hostel as the Koalas in Noosa. While waiting for the hostel to open we simply sat in the car and slept, as the rain kept lashing down relentlessly. Our room stank, and the place just looked like it was falling apart. It didn't help we had some drunken Irish idiots causing havoc nearby! The next day, Travis (an American friend we met in Noosa) arrived at the hostel.

The three of us were a little worried that our sailing trip to the Whitsundays would be cancelled. The rain just wouldn't stop at all, and a girl in our room had her trip cancelled due to high winds. However, that didn't stop us getting really drunk the night before our trip.

The next day I was really hungover, and the rain was still pouring down, but luckily our trip wasn't cancelled. On the way to our boat, we bumped into Madeleine (again!) who had just got back fro her trip on the Wetsundays (as some people called them), where it rained constantly! Luckily for us the weather improved during our trip, so we actually had some sun breaking through the clouds and hardly any rain at all!

On our ship, the New Horizon, we soon realised we were on a good ship. One of the crew, Blair, came out of the cabin wearing a purple wig and a Victorian woman's swimming costume to explain safety procedures! There were about 30 people on the boat, including the really good four member crew. The chef cooked some really good food!

As we got on the boat at about 3pm, the first day was just sailing out to the islands. As they appeared you could appreciate how beautiful they were. White beaches, rainforests and unspoilt nature was on every island we sailed past. It seemed that many people had hangovers that day, which wasn't helped by the rocking boat. I felt terrible for the whole day!

We started the second day with a snorkel of one of the beaches. The recent bad weather meant that there wasn't a huge amount to see, so we moved to another place before Thomas, myself and two others did a scuba dive. Aided by Travis's underwater camera, we took some really good photos of the coral reef (the Whitsundays are part of the Great Barrier Reef) at our dive spot.

We then moved to the main attraction of the Whitsundays; Whitehaven Beach. It was so good that the weather had improved, otherwise this postcard view of the islands would've been spoiled. We were dropped off on the shore and headeded up to the viewpoint. Onthe way we saw hundreds and hundreds of small crabs running away from us as we approached. If we got near to any of them they would bury themselves in the sand and disappear within a few seconds.

The view from the lookout was stunning, words simply cannot describe how beautiful it was. We spent the time just standing there trying to take it all in. Beautiful is an understatement. It was almost magical.

That evening most of us got drunk on the ship, along with the crew. The were loads of other boats anchored around ours, and at about midnight, two of the crew took the dinghy over to a nearby ship they knew, climbed on board, stole a crate and got back to the New Horizon before the other boat realised what had happened. They had stolen a fancy dress box, and those who were still awake (including myself and Thomas) got dressed in wigs, fairy wings and dresses. It was really good fun!

On the last day we were going to do some more dives, but the visibilty was awful, so we sailed around the islands one more time before heading back to Airlie Beach. It was funny, as we got nearer the clouds became thicker, and it was obvious that while there was no rain on the islands, Airlie Beach was as rainy as it was when we left!

That evening we met up with some of the crew and fellow passengers at a local bar. We saw Madeleine, and we really pissed her off with tales of our relatively un-rainy trip. SHe was going slightly crazy, as she had had constant rain for nearly a week. The next day she flew to Sydney, where it was also raining!

We had a fantastic time sailing around the beautiful Whitsunday Islands, and it certainly was one of the highlights of my time in Australia.

Next stop, Cairns!

1 German and 1 Brit in a Car 3: Hervey Bay to Airlie Beach (3rd to 8th Feb)

Day 1 Hervey Bay to Gladstone

We left Hervey and continued up towards Gladstone; a handy stopover point on the way to Airlie Beach. On the way we took a slight detour to Bundaberg. Bundaberg is famous (in Australia anyway) for Bundaberg Rum and Bundaberg Ginger Beer. The rum is really crap, but it has an iconic polar bear as their symbol, which is really weird considering polar bears living in the artic. Apparently the designer thought that the rum chilled you down so much that it reminded him of cold things like polar bears!

We didn't bother doing the distillery tour, but went down the road to the ginger beer brewery. This is where the ginger beer Mum always buys is made! The brewery had an interesting interactive tour about the beer making process, and we had tastings of all of their products.

We then drove up to boring and ugly Gladstone. There really was nothing notable about this place, other than it having a great hostel to stay in.

Day 2 Gladstone to Canarvon National Park

We went off the beaten track today and headed inland, and I mean, really inland. We were driving west for over 400kms and ended up at Carnarvon National Park, where they have the most amazing gorge full of wildlife and Aboriginal artwork. By the time we got there it was late afternoon, so we checked out a couple of the things outside of the actual gorge. We loooked at the Baloon (yes that's the correct spelling) Cave, which was covered in ancient Aboriginal paintings. Most were stencils of hands, boomerangs and other items. The artist would mix up the paint, put it in his/her mouth and then spray it over an object placed on the wall, which left a stencil of that object for all to see.

We walked down Mickey's Creek and Wurrambah Gorge. The gorge was an offshot of the larger main one, and the walking track ended only a few minutes down it, but we could easily walk further down. The walls of the gorge gradually got narrower and narrower, and it got more and more difficult to walk through it. We climbed up a rock with the intention of walking further, until we saw some f***ing huge and aggressive spiders swimming in the water towards us, so we hurried back down the rock!

That night we slept in our tent with the top cover off and just the mossie net, and had a great view of the stars above us.

Day 3 A hell of a lot of walking and driving.

We rose before the sun had risen, drove the short drive to the gorge entrance and walked the 6 km return walk to Bolimba Bluff, where we watched the sun rise over the gorge. It was an amazing sight as the gorge was flooded with golden light from the sun.

We walked down to the gorge itself and headed as far as we could go to Big Bend, which was about 10kms, and crossed Canarvon Creek at least 20 times. We then headed back the way we came, going up all the side tracks along the way. The most notable were Cathedral Cave and the Art Gallery, which had even better Aboriginal artwork. Stencils, paintings and engravings covered much of the cliffs in these places.

The Ampitheatre was also really impressive. You walk through a narrow crack in the cliffs which opens up into a large cavern with a small gap where sunlight flooded through. The acoustics were amazing, and our voices rebounded off the rocks like thunder.

Eventually we made it back to our car and headed out of the park. We'd been walking for about 12 hours with only couple of breaks, and we were really exhausted, but it was totally worth it. I would say it's one of the best national parks I've been to in Australia.

We then had the massive drive back to Gladstone. We arrived back at the same hostel at about 11pm! It was a long, exhausting, and fantastic day.

Day 4 The rain comes...

We left Gladstone and continued up to Airlie Beach. Rainy season was now under way, and we were constantly concerned that we would be stranded by the roads flooding. Every few minutes we saw warning signs about the floods. Luckily we were fine for most of the day. We stopped at Rockhampton, which Simon had highly recommended us to visit. At the entrance to the town, we passed over the Tropic of Capricorn, where there was a monument showing the line, where some f****ing huge spiders wer making webs. Rockhampton is the beef capital of Australia, so naturally there were giant cows all around! The zoo was awful, but the Botanic Gardens were interesting. The star attraction was a giant fig tree, which took up an aeaof about 2 hectares! Other than that Rockhampton was really boring. I'm not sure why Simon liked it so much.

We tried to find somewhere to stay in Mackay, a nice stopping point on the way to Airlie, but everywhere was full. We decided instead to head straight to the Eungella National Park. On the way the heavens opened, and there was a massive tropical downpour. Add to this that it was foggy, pitch black, and we were going up windy roads, you can tell that we had a really dangerous drive! We got lost several times, but eventually fond a campsite run by the park. However, it was so wet and waterlogged that we just pushed the car seats back and slept in there for the night!

Day 5 Platypus!

The next day the rain hadn't stopped, it had merely stopped pouring down. Eungella NP was supposed to be a place to see platypussies (:P), and Thomas and I were really hoping that just maybe we would see one this time. Our luck paid off, and down by the river, we saw one, and it was scratching (Tasmania people know what I'm talking about!). It was such an amazing sight. They're not as big as you think they should be, and it looked like a small otter, with a duck like bill instead of teeth. We were sooooo happy to have seen one, and it made my day!

We then drove the short distance to Airlie Beach. Read the next entry to see what we did there, and our sailing trip to the Whitsunday Islands!