We were in the small seaside town of Airlie Beach solely to visit the Whitsunday Islands and Craig was especially excited about this because many is the islands and beaches are named after places in Cumberland such as Carlisle Island, Scawfell Island and Whitehaven Beach.

The beach at Airlie Beach we didn't see, nor did we see its beautiful lagoon or any of the Whitsunday Islands. On our arrival after a 12 hour overnight Greyhound bus journey it was raining heavily and it continued to rain, torrentially, for the next 48 hours. We did book a tour of the Whitsundays but it was inevitably cancelled due to the inclement weather. We spent the day literally trapped in our hostel surfing the internet until midnight when we were picked up by our next Greyhound bus.

We had considered staying in Airlie Beach longer but the weather showed little sign of relenting and as our time is Australia is short we decided to cut our losses and continue our trip down the east coast.