On Our Way To Hervey Bay

Aside from a slight bit of yelling from some idiots we had a good nights sleep, even James, who had been previously worried about his sock that had fallen onto the balcony railing below us. Once we had stripped our beds and packed up we locked our bags in the storage room and set off to see the sights of Airlie Beach for proper.

Other than the row of tat shops and tour offices there was only a couple of walks for anything to do in Airlie Beach. As I needed to book my tour round Fraser Island I popped into a tour operator that we had seen the day before and they kindly let us on the internet for free to book it as they didn’t have any sufficient tours for me. Once I had booked it we looked into the possibility of getting the Greyhound buses to Australia Zoo, but this was off the beaten track and seemed implausible without organising a specific pick-up from the zoo, which would hit our wallets for a few dollars more. The woman running the place was kind enough to help us but we never got it completely sorted and knew we would have to look into it at our next destination, Hervey Bay.

Cannonvale Beach

After we left the shop we hit the trail taking us to Cannonvale Beach, a 4 Km walk along the seafront. Along the way we bumped into Anni from the night before and exchanged pleasantries but little else – she was even quieter without a glass of wine in her hand. Ummmm, there wasn’t much to see along the way, so we headed back to have fish ‘n’ chips, whilst trying to avoid the seagulls that hung around us like flies around……errr……fish ‘n’ chips. On the way back we bumped into……Anni again, as she was kitted up and ready to get on her boat for the Whitsundays tour. Again, we exchanged pleasantries, although not so many this time, and we were on our way. With our bellies full we headed off on the other trail that led us out of the other side of the town, but again, aside from another beautiful beach there was little else to see. To waste/use up time we headed up into the surrounding hills to see if we could get a good look across the bay. We were unsuccessful in our attempt, but we did come face to face with a 3 foot long iguana that scuttled across some rocks in front of us. It suddenly brought back that feeling that we were in Australia and all bets were off, and that we could come across all manner of unknowns out in the wild.

Airlie Beach

With a few more hours to kill James finally bought a book and we grabbed a coffee at McD’s to try and book some more accommodation for the next few stops. Having no Wi-Fi put an abrupt stop to that and we longed for the days of America where it was all free and guaranteed. However, as I was ordering an apple pie I was absent-mindedly gazing out of the window when a large seagull-type bird swooped down and grabbed the burger from a startled surfer-dude sitting outside. I laughed my head off as he did a double-take thinking “did that actually just happen?!”. It kept me going for ages and I was still chuckling as we made our way down to the Greyhound stop.

There were a few others waiting with us, but thankfully there were plenty of seats available for us, so both me and James got two seats each. That avoided the uncomfortable question of who should get the window seat. It would take us from 7pm to 7am to get through to Hervey Bay and we both hoped that we wouldn’t get a whole host of people jumping on the coach somewhere down the line.