Beaches

The morning started well – we had both slept great in the comfy, clean beds and had breakfast. We were packing our things when the mood turned sour. As James lifted his bag off the floor a huge cockroach scuttled from underneath. James reacted as he did when he came across the big scary butterfly the day before, and it legged it underneath my bed. The irony was that we had flaunted the rules on no eating in the rooms because we assumed that it was just to keep everything tidy and get people together in the kitchen. And now we had a problem on our hands. A BIG problem. We chased it from behind the fridge and it came out into the open by the sliding door (which had a good inch at the bottom to allow for such insects into the rooms!). Quick as a flash I grabbed my book and in one sweeping motion whisked it back under the door into the corridor. There were no shrieks or howls from scared passers-by so we assumed it was just gonna wander around out there and find some other nook or cranny to get into. After 60 seconds it had sauntered back into our room and I repeated the book-swipe manoeuvre, and this time it had no response. We never saw it again, which was good.

Our bus was arriving at the ferry terminal at half 11 so we arrived promptly at just before half 10. James was still in need of a book so ran off for one last attempt at finding a book shop whilst I stayed with the luggage. After a minute or so the young girl sitting a few seats away came and asked if the bus was going to Mackay, to which I replied “yes”. Quite how we got from that to her telling me her life-story that included her leaving home at 13, her ex-boyfriend beating her that led to her losing their baby and that she was diagnosed with bi-polar when she was 11, but didn’t take anything for it apart from cigarettes, I’ll never know. I kept looking at my watch and hoping that James would come sprinting round the corner, book in hand, to take some of the action, but he was away for what seemed like an hour. Thankfully he did return a few minutes before the bus turned up and she proceeded to tell him 80% of the stories she had just told me. With only a handful of people on the bus we managed to get a set of two seats each and settled in for the 3 ½ hour trip to Airlie Beach.

The trip was pretty uneventful really, aside from the fact that the scenery looked almost exactly the same throughout the journey. We pulled into Airlie Beach and set about finding the hostel – Global Backpackers. We had trouble finding it for sure. We knew the road it was on, the main road that goes right through the town, but could not see a sign for Global Backpackers whatsoever. I asked in the YHA and they said it had changed its name to Beaches Backpackers. Brilliant. Why hadn’t they said that on the website?! We found it 5 minutes later and checked in, expecting the usual crowd of young ‘uns messing around and a room in a pretty poor state of repair. We were pleasantly surprised. The room was massive compared to our other hostels, had a double and a single bed and a small kitchenette, and all pretty much clean enough too. We almost rued the fact that we would only be staying there for one night.

Our massive room!

People go to Airlie Beach for one thing – access to the Whitsunday islands just off the coast. There is not much else around, as we found out on our pre-dinner meander along the main road. Plenty of tat shops and fish ‘n’ chip restaurants, but not much else. At dinner we tucked in to a half price meal with a beer at the in-house restaurant (carbonara for James, the “kick-ass” hamburger for me) for $6.50……not at all bad! The “beer” that we were served with our food was basically a thimbles-worth, and I’m not sure of the Aussie terminology but I think it was about the same as a small glass of wine. After dinner we ordered an $8 pitcher of beer as that seemed to be the best option going (strictly no alcohol in the rooms, probably to make you drink in the bar downstairs) and were joined later by Anni, a German girl travelling through Oz before returning to Germany in a few weeks. Another pitcher of beer was ordered just before 8pm (the end of Happy Hour) and we made it last til about 10pm whilst chatting away to Anni, above the noise of the live music, which was actually very good, but Anni was a bit of a Low Talker so it made things difficult occasionally.

A free small beer

We retired to the room soon after we had finished the beer as we would need to be up earlyish in the morning to explore Airlie Beach while we had the chance, before we would be getting our 12 hour overnighter to Hervey Bay and Fraser Island.