Day 102 - Australia Day in the Town of 1770 - Thursday 26th January 2012

Today is national Australia day and seeing as we were in the town of 1770, where Captain Cook landed we thought it would be the place to be!! Oh dear how wrong we were. 1770 really only consists of 1 very old school pub, about 6 shops, 1 restaurant and 1 petrol station - not really party central. This was probably a good thing seeing as our bus to Airlie Beach left at 9pm that night and an 8 hour bus ride after an all-day drinking session is a bad idea! Instead we had a really nice chilled out day. We hired some bikes from our hostel and rode about 20 km down through Agnes Water down to the beach; the weather was amazing, perfect blue sky with the odd cloud bringing some welcome relief to the heat! As we had hardly eaten out and seeing as it was Australia day we stopped at the 1 restaurant in town and had a couple of beers and some wine with our dinner. Soph had fresh sea scallops and salad and I had the fish of the day - Javelin fish with mango salad and chips! Soph said it's the best chips she has ever tasted; I think she was saying that so she could nick half my food! After dinner we stayed in the restaurant, let our food go down and just starred at the amazing views with some more wine! Afterwards we got back on our bikes but not after a stroll along the beach. We then rode back to the only pub in town; this pub is just like the one in Crocodile Dundee's first film, you know the one in walkabout creek with spit & sawdust on the floor!! We ordered a couple of scooners and even entered the meat raffle! Because it was Australia day all the locals were in there and after a while they had moved all the cars out the car park to make a massive cricket pitch! It was so funny watching a load of drunken aussies playing cricket in the pub car park! We also had our faces painted with aussie flags by the barmaids! Everyone was wearing their Australian t-shirts and the kids, adults and grandparents all celebrated together in the pub and pub gardens - it was a really nice atmosphere. After about 3 hours we journeyed back to the hostel where we packed our bags ready for our overnight bus to Airlie beach.