Reaching Airlie Beach and The Whitsundays

Our bus wasn’t until midday, but luckily it was just across the road so we got up for free breakfast and checked out at 10, but just sat in the hostel garden until it was time to move. It was a nice little hostel, and another lovely day. The bus came and began the long journey to Rockhampton. We had a 3 hour journey to Hervey Bay where we had to change busses. We had to wait for 3 hours there, managed to pass the time fairly quickly as the bus stop was right by a little shopping mall. The next bus came, and then we had a 7 hour journey to Rockhampton, arriving just after midnight. We stopped along the way for dinner and I got a very expensive fish and chips. We didn’t want to fork out for a taxi again, so we began walking, not really sure where we were going, but referred to Lonely Planet’s map to help us on our way. We walked for a short while and I figured it’d be better to have a look at the actual instructions on the confirmation. Turned out Lonely Planet had sent us in completely the wrong direction, so we went back to where we started and followed the right instructions. It was very quiet, a bit scary but it was OK. We came across a stray dog, luckily he was more scared of us than the other way round! There were bats getting rowdy and swooping around. And the same pickup truck drove past us 3 times in about 10 minutes, which was the scariest part! The walk seemed to go on forever, and we were so hot despite it being the middle of the night. We had to go down a couple of very dark roads which disturbed peoples dogs, and eventually, after an hour, we made it! Absolutely shattered. Our key was left in a safe, we found our room and crashed out. Our plans for the next day consisted on sleeping really.

The lovely lab

 We got up and had breakfast then went back to bed. There was a lovely old yellow lab that would follow the owner of the hostel about while he did his daily duties! Very sweet. I enjoyed stroking her for a bit! We slept through until about 3pm, and then we just wandered up the road to the supermarket. The sun was making everything glow gold like it was setting, despite being mid afternoon. We had dinner when we got back, checked the internet (the Whitsundays email saga continues) and then spent the evening sorting out our stuff, ready to leave for the bus again at 1am! There were geckos everywhere at this place they were funny to watch, there was probably about 10 of them of the ceiling in the toilet block, ready to catch all the flies buzzing around the light bulb! We were in bed again by about 10.30pm, and then up and getting ready to go again just after midnight.

Early sunset in Rockhampton

 We did the long walk back to the bus station, only took us 40 minutes this time, and the scariest thing we came across was the biggest cockroach I’ve seen so far, on it’s back waving its legs about. So another 7 hour bus journey takes us through to 9am as we arrive in Airlie Beach. We are both feeling kind of jet lagged with all the odd sleeping patterns, and knackering walks with all our heavy things, and long sleepless bus rides. Again our hostel seemed to be the furthest away from the bus station, but it was only 20 minute walk this time. We made it, sweltering and shattered, only to find that we couldn‘t get in our room until 2pm. The only hostel that has had a check in time, on the worst day for us that it could! Unbelievable. 4 hours to waste by this point, after a confusing check in. I had emailed another company to see if they had any day trips available for us at short notice, she had a few options, and their office happened to just be across the road from the hostel so I popped in and had a chat and assessed our options. The one we really wanted only had once place left, and everything else apart from one was out of our budget or unavailable. So we opted with a simple snorkelling day trip, without the resort islands and beaches, we it was a good price and I just wanted to get out there and this point, in whatever shape or form! Plus I‘d heard snorkelling was really good along the Whitsundays. The lady was very helpful and she told me that the other company I’d booked through had been out of order and there definitely shouldn’t have been a cancellation fee for me to pay, when it was them who cancelled. So I got all riled up about it again, and used the free internet voucher we kindly received after booking our day trip, to send a scathing email to them again. That wasted a good hour and a half. After that we wandered along the lagoon they had, and browsed in some of the shops. We were just so zombie like, so we decided to go back to the hostel, make some lunch and then lounge on the sofas until 2pm. I managed to find Jaycee Dugard’s book about her abduction that someone must have forgotten about, ended up getting totally engrossed and read almost a quarter of the book in the last hour we had to wait. We got to our room eventually and it was lovely. The dorms were in blocks of 4, two upstairs and two down. They all had their own fridge / kitchen area, minus the amenities of a kitchen, and a nice bathroom with an actual bath. We were only staying in a 4 bed dorm, but the other 2 people hadn’t arrived yet, then we completely zonked out for 4 hours. When we woke up, the other two had arrived but were also asleep, so we left and went to get our dinner. They’d gone when we came back and so we thought we’d jump in the shower and just chill out in our room for the evening as we had another early morning the next day. I heard them arrive back while I was in the shower and Phil got chatting to them. They were from England and we all got on like a house on fire and spent the rest of the evening talking to them. We had such a good laugh and enjoyed sharing our experiences, it felt like we’d all known each other for longer than a couple of hours! Eventually we all got to sleep. Ended up getting a jumper out of my suitcase in the night as the air conditioning was so cold!

Phil ready to snorkel!

 We got up early to catch our lift to the marina at 7.30am. When we got there, we had to remove our shoes and then jumped on the sail boat! We had our talk and then set off. It was a long ride out to The Great Barrier Reef, about 2 and a half hours. It was very hot but we covered ourselves in sun cream and sat on the top deck for the duration, it was very choppy and I felt queasy sat underneath. We got there eventually and put on our ‘stinger suits’ to protect us from the lethal box jellyfish that are quite abundant at this time of year. We had to hop into a little motored dinghy to take us to the shore, put on our snorkelling gear and flippers and then we were left to our own devices for an hour or so! It wasn’t too cold to just get straight in the water, to test out my head gear I just dunked my head under water before I was fully in and immediately saw these cool electric blue fish, loads of them swimming right around us, it was amazing! So off we went exploring the reef. It really was incredible, so many impossibly coloured fish and coral, it felt like we were in Finding Nemo! It was quite easy to lose your bearings, and each other, while under the water, so had to pop our heads up every now and again. You just go into your own little world when you are swimming around by yourself, being underwater like that is another world in its self, totally fascinating. I managed to get some good photos, but after a while the screen just went blank on my camera and I couldn’t get It to come back. So I was pretty annoyed about that. I swam back to shore as I wasn’t sure when we were due to leave and I wanted to dry off a bit. I left my camera on the beach to dry it out, the beach consisted of dead coral so I wandered up and down and collected bits that I liked. When the lady came to get us on a dinghy, she chucked another girl’s collected coral into the sea, and said you can’t take it. Mine were all at the bottom of my bag and I didn’t have time to faff about to fish it all out, so I kept it and said to myself I‘d put it back into the sea at the next stop… We went to another snorkelling point, off the coast of Hayman Island Resort who apparently charge $4500AUD per night! Anyway, we got motored across to the shore again, and got on our way. Supposedly there is a high chance of coming across turtles in that part, but we managed to avoid them all unfortunately! The coral was a lot taller here and had loads of different colours and varieties compared to the other part. Phil even managed to scrape his knee of it, it was amazing to be able to swim that close to it. Again there were lots of nice fish, and I saw a huge one which I tried to follow but he was too quick and there was a lower visibility than in the last place. I attempted some photos with my blank screen, and hoped they’d come out alright! We swam back over to the sail boat when it was time to go, it was strange being that far into the ocean and seeing how deep it was, a bit scary actually! Hopped back on and all of a sudden a turtle appears, a little way away from the boat but you could see him clearly swimming along the top of the water, popping his head up! Shame we missed him in the water, but at least we saw one. So we left for the long journey back, we had a nice chicken lunch and sat on the top deck again to do some sunbathing. We lasted about an hour out there, I started to feel dizzy and nauseous despite keeping hydrated and having my head covered, and Phil managed to still burn despite 3 consecutive applications of factor 50+! That was a very strong sun out there that day, first time we really experienced how strong the Australasian sun really can be. So I spent the rest of the journey feeling weary, slumped round the back in the shade but with the cool sea air blowing on me! By the time we got back I felt fine and we went back to the hostel. We met our room mates in there and got chatting again. We had all received a free drink voucher for the bar when we checked in, so we arranged to go there and do that with them. Phil and I went off to make our dinner and then we met the others later on. It was a decent place, good to be in that atmosphere and hear some music again! We found the others and met a German girl they’d got chatting to. She was really nice and easy to get on with, despite there being a few problems with hearing and understanding each other, she had a great sense of humour though! She asked what my job was and I told her, she couldn’t believe what I have been doing for a living and said that was the best thing she’d ever heard and wanted to do it herself! She was in her masters year of journalism, but said maybe one day she’d be able to get in a position where she could do what do! We chatted about our love for dogs for a while which was refreshing. Through out the evening drinks kept appearing in front of us from people which was very generous! So we did well for the evening drinks wise, without having to spend a penny. They were having a ’pole dancing’ competition at 11pm which only guys, except one girl, signed up for. Phil and our room mate being two of them! There was $50 at steak to it was definitely worth a pop.. Unfortunately neither of them won but they put in a good effort! We had all had enough just after mid night so we left and went back to our room, chatted for a bit (about dogs again) and then fell asleep. We were leaving the next morning, we really enjoyed our time in Airlie Beach, we had a great laugh with our room mates it was so nice to be sharing with them for the two nights we were there.

Amazing fish

Some of the coral

We were up fairly early to pack all our stuff, we said a goodbye to the other two as they went off for a sailing trip, and said we’d meet up again when we’re all back in England. We had our breakfast and checked out. It was another boiling day so we sweated it out on the walk back down to the Greyhound terminal. We were waiting ages for the bus to come, it turns up eventually an hour an a half late, it was going to be a full bus so we were expecting a grumpy driver, but luckily he was still chirpy and in high spirits, makes all the difference! Off we went to Townsville. We stopped along the way for lunch and I got a nice breadcrmumed chicken drumstick and a milkshake. Yum.