Thursday 1st December

After being in Cairns for 2 weeks, I was beginning to get a little bored so I decided to join my friend in his journey down the coast to Airlie Beach. He told me he was hitch hiking so I made an executive decision to go with him. I am aware of the risks of taking lifts from strangers, however, Australia is extremely laid back and I would know never to get in the car with a complete weirdo. All the lifts we got were from legit people and it was interesting to meet so many different people. In total we had 9 lifts and it took one and a half days.

We had our sign which said 'A1 SOUTH J' and we began our journey from Cairns. Our first ride came around quite quickly, within half an hour. At first, I felt a bit silly holding the sign up, especially in the busy town centre of Cairns but it worked. We had a nice couple who were driving to Mission Beach that day and offered to take us. After two hours we reached the turning for Mission Beach and we got out the car.

At Mission Beach, I thought we were going to be stranded there as it took about an hour and a half for someone to stop. In that time, I began to call up car hire companies and see what the price of those would be. However, the reason for hitch hiking was to save money as I knew getting the bus back to Cairns would be pretty expensive. So I waited impatiently for the next person to pick us up. Another guy, also hitch hiking was also dropped off by the Mission Beach point where we were as well. We agreed to wait a few metres apart though as 3 people for a pick-up is quite rare. Me and Digby were offered a lift by a painter with a van which was pretty worn out. He only offered us a 30 minute ride down to Tully so we took it as we knew it wasn't far.

When we got to Tully we were only hanging around for about 15 minutes as Alex (the other hitch hiker) had scored a ride who offered to pick us up as well. We were then taken to a town called Cardwell. I can't remember the exact length of each drive, as I more or less fell asleep in every car we got into! From Cardwell we got a ride to Ingham and from there we got a long ride to a small town called Ayr.

We decided to stay in Ayr for the night as it was dark and would have been extremely difficult and quite dangerous to catch a ride with someone so late. Me, Digby and Alex found a subway for dinner and then headed to a hostel. Unfortunately the hostel we found was fully booked, so we were redirected somewhere else. We found a cheap looking hotel which had space for 3 of us but they were charging $100 for the night so we refused to pay that. Anyway, after about an hour of walking up and down Ayr's only high street we began to give up hope and thought maybe we should try and get a ride and keep going. At one point I thought we were going to end up sleeping in the streets, it was a scary thought! We came across this odd looking hostel - I honestly felt like I was in a mental institution or a really old odd looking hospital. There was a room in the back with muddy worn shoes in the corner and then a few bunk beds that looked worn and tattered like they had been around for centuries. The room off that looked like an old warehouse and the kitchen and TV room looked like a retirement home. We couldn't get out of there quick enough, even the boys were creeped out!

You will be happy to know we did find a hostel to stay in but ended up paying $35 each for the night and it was such a waste of money. We were literally staying in 'squalor with a bed' - the girls bathroom was full of lizards so I had to go to the smelly boys bathroom, the room was extremely hot and the whole hostel was eerie and falling apart. We agreed to get up at 6am and leave ASAP!

Friday 2nd December

Myself and Digby got a lift out of Ayr and down the road to a town called Home Hill. From here we got the best lift pretty much straight to the turn off for Airlie Beach. Unfortunately for Digby, in his pure excitement of being dropped off so close to our destination, he left his ipod in the car! Several swear words later, we got our 8th ride into the outskirts of Airlie Beach and our last ride was from a young couple heading straight into the centre of town right next to our hostel. A pretty awesome few days and a great story to tell of how we arrived in Airlie Beach!

We met up with Inge and Kirsty (friends from Cairns) in Airlie Beach and had a B7 reunion! (B7 was our room number in the Cairns hostel).