Whitsundays & 1770

 After Magnetic Island we headed south to our next destination, Airlie Beach. Here we stayed in a very lively hostel called Magnums; we went for dinner with some girls that we had met on the bus and then met up with a couple that we had spent some time with a few weeks ago in Cairns. As always, drinks flowed and we had another great evening.

After a few chilled days in Airlie Beach we set off for our 3-day boat trip around the Whitsundays islands. Our boat had 18 people on, the majority of which were young couples from various parts of England and China so we met some really interesting people, which we hope to keep in contact with. During our trip we went snorkelling, tried paddle boarding and Alex went diving again.

As part of our trip we went to Whitehaven Beach, which was simply paradise. It had the clearest, tropical water we’ve ever seen and the softest, whitest sand. The sand is known to be one of the purest forms of sand in the world and for this reason is heavily protected, we even had to wash the sand of our feet before we were allowed to leave. We also climbed up to the lookout for Whitehaven Beach; this is apparently the third most photographed spot in the whole of Australia.

After the trip had ended around half the group met up that evening at a bar in Airlie Beach. The Bar turned out to have a pub quiz on that evening so we all entered. We came second winning $150, which we wisely spent on 15 ‘aqua bombs’ at the bar. Oops?

Our next stop was the town of 1770. To reach this destination we, along side many of the people that we had met in the past week or so, boarded an eventful overnight bus. The bus diver managed to bang his head on the bus door and badly cut his head open, and the bus had some kind of engine fault resulting in us having to stop at the side of the road and wait for a mechanic.

The town of 1770 marks Captain Cook’s first landing in Queensland. That said, the tiny town seems to have progressed very little from Captain Cook’s first landing all those years ago as we’ve found ourselves to be pretty isolated and with very little to do. 

Nevertheless we went on a scooter tour. We were given leather jackets (mine was bright pink, of course) and fake tattoos to help us capture the biker look. Although we were both fairly unexcited about this trip, we embraced the experience and it turned out to be a lot of fun. After a frightening small amount of practice on the scooters we were let loose on the roads and our 3 hour tour began. Despite obviously seeing the ‘town’, or lack of it, we saw at least 50 kangaroos and got to watch a stunning sunset.