Airlie Beach

We arrived in Airlie bright and early after yet another lengthy overnight bus ride. We had high hopes for the little town seeing as we were both running out of money and had heard that job prospects where pretty good. Well whoever told us that was lying through their teeth. After papering the main drag with resumes we had only heard back from a travel company which would only reimburse us with travel dollars. Which are as good as monopoly money. We figured we had to move on pretty quickly, but not without having some fun first!

A friend of ours from Winnipeg had been au pairing in Airlie since September and was eager to meet up with us before we left. Tricia had grown up with Sabrina and she and I had gone through elementary school together. Ironically it was both girls birthdays the week we landed in Airlie. Tricia took us out on the town and we celebrated Sabrinas champagne birthday with some bubbly. The night was lots of fun and it was great to see another familiar face.

Its stinger season until the end of April in northern Queensland, so swimming in the ocean is pretty much out of the question. Luckily Airlie has a lovely little lagoon that we hung out at while the sun was out. From there we could watch the big sailboats coming in from the Whitsunday Islands. Unfortunately we had to leave Airlie before we had a chance to get on a boat and go for a trip around the Islands it would have been amazing. Whitehaven beach has the whitest sand of any beach in the world making the Whitsundays world famous. I figure because I missed out this time it just means that I'll have to come back and see them on another trip!

Airlie was hit pretty badly by a cyclone in March. Nobody was seriously injured but there is still some debris lying around from boats that had been washed ashore during the storm.