The Whitsundays (and the East Coast from Cairns to Bundaberg)
With just 8 days before our flight from Brisbane to New Zealand we left Cairns in our hire car to get stuck into the almost 2000km journey. It doesn't sound so bad when you put it like that but throw in a couple of must see sights like the Whitsundays and Fraser Island and it could suddenly be seen as a little bit tight…time to get cracking.
Our first day's drive saw us stop briefly in Mission Beach before heading down to Townsville for the night. Heading further south to Airlie Beach, the first thing we did on our arrival was to book our tour to the Whitsundays - we would spend a night on one of the islands followed by a full day cruise/sail the following day.
An early morning ferry took us across to Long Island and the rather swanky looking resort - unfortunately we were staying in the rather less swanky 'lodge' rooms round the back and next to a loud piece of machinery, but we still had full use of the resort's facilities and the beautiful beach and sea was free (including the scarily small stinger warning signs).
We enjoyed a well earned day of relaxing on the beach, though it wasn't as conducive to an afternoon snooze as it might have been as chainsaws were being used to cut down coconuts from the numerous trees before they could fall and injure someone. It would seem that the Australian authorities are slightly more health and safety conscious than those in Thailand as on Koh Tao we had numerous near misses.
A ride on a golf buggy type contraption took us out to the jetty the next morning where our fetching lilac coloured sail boat which raced a few years ago in the Sydney to Hobart race picked us up and we joined the 80 odd other people on a day's tour.
There's not many better ways to spend a day than sailing on turquoise waters surrounded by some of the 74 islands which make up the Whitsundays. We also saw our first turtles, though unfortunately not while we were snorkelling (though with 80 odd people in the water at once you can't really blame them).
The highlight of the tour saw us stop at the famous Whitehaven beach, the jewel in the Whitsundays and supposedly one of the top 5 beaches in Australia - its hard to argue with that. We spent a pleasant hour or so taking in the beauty of the beach and swimming in our very high fashion stinger suits.
We then had some distance to cover to make sure we had enough time to squeeze in Fraser Island and still get to Brisbane in time so Friday was spent in the car with a couple of brief stops along the way in Mackay and Rockhampton (beef capital of Australia) - unfortunately, or maybe luckily, we didn't have any time for sightseeing.
Almost 750km from the mornings starting point and more than a little spaced out we finally stopped for the night in the interestingly named town of Gin Gin.
Most people go to Bundaberg to visit the iconic Bundaberg rum distillery. We however stopped by to visit the ginger beer factory. I'm not sure if that's a sign of good taste or maybe age but we've drunk quite a lot of their ginger beer since we've been in Aus so it seemed like something that had to be done. An over inflated entrance fee allowed us to take a short audio tour and meet 'Doug the fun-gi' in a holographic video that wasn't anywhere near as impressive as the Shane Warne one at the MCG. We also learned that tasting soft drinks is nowhere near as much fun as wine tasting but a safer thing to do when driving.
Next stop the quaint little seaside town of Rainbow Beach, gateway to Fraser Island…