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Mackay to Airlie Beach(July)
We turned off the main highway at Proserpine towards Airlie Beach, the drive was quite lovely, bit narrow and windy but ocean glimpses on one side and forest on the other. As you turn the bend into Airlie beach itself I was blown away, you could have been in the south of France or Spain, all the houses are built up the cliffs and the beautiful colours that you find in those places, the main street is full of souvenir shops, bars and cafes but the beach itself was nothing to write home about. The park we had chosen Airlie Cove, is on the far side of town about a five minute drive and backs on to the national park. It is a very well maintained park, beautiful lawns and shrubs a lovely swimming pool area and the tree covered hills rising in the background. The ablutions block is quite large, clean and spacious and the drying area is also quite large which is good when you have a lot of washing to do like I had. They had an Internet computer set up in the laundry so you could catch up on your e-mails whilst waiting for the washing to finish. The park apparently has resident possums, which they ask you not to disturb if you find them asleep in the laundry during the day, there are bush turkeys wandering around, especially early in the morning, and even a few kangaroos come hopping through occasionally to see what is happening.
We drove to Shute Harbour up through the windy hills and down again. A very picturesque harbour which has the ferries that go out to the Whitsunday Islands and boats for hire and we also saw a couple of the maxi yachts you hear so much about during the Sydney to Hobart race. We saw a sign to a lookout and a café so off we went, up again and getting narrower, the lookout was ok but no café there so we continued up, we finally find it and it is worth the drive, we were getting a little concerned as we had seen no further signage, but this was explained, the council would not allow them to put signs up, they had to ‘rent’ signs from the council at a fairly high rate if they wanted signs. The café was only small but had a balcony overlooking the ocean and the islands and they made the most amazing raspberry sundae.
Most of the time we were at Airlie Beach the weather whilst not unpleasant was overcast with occasional rain, both light and heavy, in fact one night we had gone for a walk in the town and discovered the ‘lagoon’ which is a man-made area of pools and landscaped gardens, with shade sails, tables, bbqs. Etc. fully lit at night with a full time life guard until 9 pm then a security guard takes over, as we were wandering around the heavens opened and we got drenched. Each morning we have woken up to the clouds covering the hills behind us, but this usually lifts by mid morning, except the day we went to Proserpine. We packed lunch and drove to Proserpine for a look around and hopefully some shopping then we were off to Cedar Falls to have our lunch. When we got into Proserpine and started wandering around we both felt uncomfortable, in fact we couldn’t wait to get out of the place, no idea why it was just like most other country towns but we didn’t like it. We then went to Cedar Creek Falls which was off the road to Airlie beach, a very pretty area and the falls whilst not spectacular very nice, but it was drizzling all the time and the mozzies were out in full force and hungry, so we decided not to have lunch there and drove onwards to Conway Beach, either everyone in this little town goes out to work or they are all weekenders, there was hardly anyone around. There was a caravan park there which didn’t look too bad, it doubles for the local bar and restaurant as well but they hadn’t got any hot food ready so we went down to the beach and ate what we had prepared.
Whilst at Airlie Beach you have to go on a tour of the Whitsunday Islands. We took a 3 island tour which included South Molle Island, Daydream Island and Long Island. There are lots of different tours ours was quite basic, you hopped on the bus outside the caravan park and got taken to Shute harbour, there you are allocated one of the ferries that go around the islands and a ‘tour’ guide who gives you all the information on the various places you are visiting. You get to stop on each of the islands for an hour or so and are allowed to use the facilities that the resorts have, eg. Swimming pool, spa, restaurants etc. Again the weather was dull and drizzly when we left the park but it did improve during the day, so much so that I actually had a swim when we got to the last island, I did regret it, the water was very cold and the wind chilly when I got out, but at least I had been for a swim.!! All three islands had their own appeal, I liked South Molle the best, Daydream is owned by Novatel and charges their prices, and there is no where other than the resort restaurants to eat, and there did not appear to be a ‘budget’ one of them, but it was lovely, Long Island is a resort aimed at the family and would be ideal for a family holiday, lots of activities planned for the children, parents can relax, none of the pretentiousness of Daydream, but also none of the class, to me South Molle seemed somewhere in between.
We think if we come again we’d like to hire a cabin cruiser and just island hop ourselves, a lot of the islands are uninhabited and you can camp on them, it could be magic. We enjoyed ourselves at Airlie beach despite the weather, just wandering around the town, stopping for coffees seeing the surrounding areas, perhaps we stayed a little longer than was necessary but it was very relaxing. It is really a young persons town, plenty of combi vans, backpackers and with plenty to do at night, plenty of backpackers lodges and discount tours to all points around this part of the coast. Most of the hotels had some form of entertainment to attract the customers. Also you could walk to Whitsunday the next town along the coast in about 15 minutes with even more budget style accomodation.

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