Airlie beach was a welcome relief. Very pretty, quite lively and more touristy than our previous two stops. We chose a Big4 campsite which gave us a large pitch in amongst the trees which was quite private and felt less like we were living in someone's back yard. Here we got a chance to feed more birds - rainbow lorikeets that came down to the swimming pool area each morning. They sat on our heads and arms to feed. Oliver saw his second wild kangaroo by the toilet block and Angus found lots of tiny lizards. It was so pleasant in fact we decided to stay two nights and arrange a trip to the Whitsunday islands for our second day.
We chose a jet boat trip to go snorkelling and to stop on Whitehaven beach. The trip went past a lot of the islands but we saw very little in the way of marine life. No whales! We did see a strange 1960s underwater observatory though. The snorkelling was good in a bay on Border Island (although Tiger would not get in, preferring to sit in the dinghy and watch the fish through a makeshift bucket viewer). We annoyed the large posh boat who had anchored in the bay thinking they would be on their own. The water was a bit chilly so we hired wetsuits - Mr and Mrs Pugh looked very fetching in a his n hers pair. Most inelegant. Oliver's kept popping open at the back in the water and he got a bit cold. Not even the old trick of weeing in his wetsuit assisted. In fact everyone got cold and there was lots of goose pimpled flesh on the boat by the end of the session.
Whitehaven beach lived up to its reputation as one of the top 10 beaches in the world with miles and miles of white sand fringed with rainforest. We had a picnic lunch here watched by large lace monitors who happily ate scraps thrown by anyone. The kids enjoyed feeding the leftovers to the black and white striped fish in the shallow transparent waters on the beach. The fish got a bit too excitable and nibbled on their fingers and toes as well. The sand was beautiful and as part of a world heritage site you were not allowed to take any of it away - this did not stop the surly French girls filling an empty coke bottle with it and smuggling it off the beach. Outrageous. We were fed doughnuts and choc chip cookies on the way back (this may have been the final straw that persuaded Oliver of the need to buy running shoes at the next available opportunity to help him fight the flab that is increasing round our waistlines. We were dropped back at our resort just as we had been collected - on the minibus by the boat owner - a Lebanese Australian who was keen to talk shop about his retaining wall to another Lebanese construction expert on the trip.
So we left Airlie beach happy, stopping off to buy running shoes for Oliver, flip flops for Angus and Monopoly the card game to entertain us on our remaining nights on the road.