Out the door by 6:30 am! The warm air greeted us along with an already high sun. It's no wonder many Australians are early risers. There is a lot going on early in the morning, including a variety of birds that fill the morning with a cacophony of calls. Airlie Beach was the start for our Whitsunday Cruise aboard the Camira high-performance sailing catamaran. The cruise director had entirely too much energy for that early in the morning, but it was contagious an...

Bertha and Pat prepared a lovely breakfast on the beach for us. There is a community barbeque right on the beach nearby and we brought all the fixings down from the house. It was quite an experience. After breakfast, we walked through the warm ocean water searching for starfish. There were stingers in the water, but we didn't have any problems at all with them since the water was so clear and calm. Later that morning, Pat drove us out to Airlie Beach where we...

We'd been dreading the drive we had ahead of us today but we'd made a family decision to do the power drive from Cairns to Dingo Beach in one day so, after a quick breakfast, we hit the road. Australian driving is much different than Canadian driving. The speed limit changes all the time and the road passes through many towns. Many of the roads are single lane, but there are many passing lanes along the way, so we tended to follow slower traffic waiting for the...