Whitsundays
We got to Agnes Water/ Town of 1770 in the hope of our very last surf on the east coast before the Great Barrier Reef blocked out all the swell. We found …. about a six inch wave! Which didn’t stop a little girl of about six learning to surf on a big soft board, but weighing substantially more than her we had to kiss goodbye any surfing action for some months.
So we pushed on with a mammoth drive (longest since the Nullabor) through miles and miles of canefields. With the windows open and Paul Kelly on the stereo, we’ve possibly never felt more Australian!
We drove right through to Airlie Beach where we were keen to soak in some mellow Whitsundays kind of vibe. Hah! Airlie Beach was nothing like what we’d expected – it was pretty much a full-on backpacker party town, which seemed to be expanding at a furious rate, with construction going on all over the place.
The nearby camping spots in a National Park were no longer in operation, so we had to stay in another caravan park. Which turned out to be not only right next to the main road (like they all were) but also right next to the airport, which meant small planes and helicopters taking off and landing about 150m away from where we were camped. The management weren’t at all accommodating when we tried to get a night refunded that we’d paid for in advance – so whatever you do, next time in Airlie Beach don’t stay at the Flametree Caravan Park. (Nic: Had to get that out of my system!)
The point of being there was for the Whitsunday Islands, and we did get out there on a boat trip with a really nice bunch of people and great crew, which involved a good long snorkel next to an island, where we saw some fabulous coral and a huge number of amazingly colourful fish.
It also involved a stop at the very white Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, as well as a walk up to the lookout over Hill Inlet. We were told by at least two staff on the boat that this was the ‘Fourth most photographed place in Australia’. Which of course meant that Tim was asking ‘so what are the top three?’ and then questioning, ‘well how is it measured?’
The crew on the boat just got the tailend of our bemusement/slight frustration at the whole tourist hyperbole that just seems never-ending! It is like everything has to have some claim to be the highest, the longest, the oldest, the most photographed. We keep asking why things can’t be just high or long or old or beautiful – why do they have to be the ‘most’ all the time?
Some hyperbole seems warranted when you’re talking about the highest mountain or the largest river, but when places resort to ‘Silkwood – home to the smallest National Bank in Australia’ you know that Silkwood doesn’t have a lot else to recommend it. (The bank was pretty small by the way!)
So anyway, at the risk of sounding like complete wowsers, we’d had enough of Airlie Beach, the ‘the biggest backpacker party town in Australia’, and went inland to Proserpine Dam to try and catch a barramundi. But given the short amount of time we had to try and suss things out, it wasn’t so successful. It was spooky being on out on the water in a drowned forest and Nic took some classic pics.
So we pushed on with a mammoth drive (longest since the Nullabor) through miles and miles of canefields. With the windows open and Paul Kelly on the stereo, we’ve possibly never felt more Australian!
We drove right through to Airlie Beach where we were keen to soak in some mellow Whitsundays kind of vibe. Hah! Airlie Beach was nothing like what we’d expected – it was pretty much a full-on backpacker party town, which seemed to be expanding at a furious rate, with construction going on all over the place.
The nearby camping spots in a National Park were no longer in operation, so we had to stay in another caravan park. Which turned out to be not only right next to the main road (like they all were) but also right next to the airport, which meant small planes and helicopters taking off and landing about 150m away from where we were camped. The management weren’t at all accommodating when we tried to get a night refunded that we’d paid for in advance – so whatever you do, next time in Airlie Beach don’t stay at the Flametree Caravan Park. (Nic: Had to get that out of my system!)
The point of being there was for the Whitsunday Islands, and we did get out there on a boat trip with a really nice bunch of people and great crew, which involved a good long snorkel next to an island, where we saw some fabulous coral and a huge number of amazingly colourful fish.
It also involved a stop at the very white Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, as well as a walk up to the lookout over Hill Inlet. We were told by at least two staff on the boat that this was the ‘Fourth most photographed place in Australia’. Which of course meant that Tim was asking ‘so what are the top three?’ and then questioning, ‘well how is it measured?’
The crew on the boat just got the tailend of our bemusement/slight frustration at the whole tourist hyperbole that just seems never-ending! It is like everything has to have some claim to be the highest, the longest, the oldest, the most photographed. We keep asking why things can’t be just high or long or old or beautiful – why do they have to be the ‘most’ all the time?
Some hyperbole seems warranted when you’re talking about the highest mountain or the largest river, but when places resort to ‘Silkwood – home to the smallest National Bank in Australia’ you know that Silkwood doesn’t have a lot else to recommend it. (The bank was pretty small by the way!)
So anyway, at the risk of sounding like complete wowsers, we’d had enough of Airlie Beach, the ‘the biggest backpacker party town in Australia’, and went inland to Proserpine Dam to try and catch a barramundi. But given the short amount of time we had to try and suss things out, it wasn’t so successful. It was spooky being on out on the water in a drowned forest and Nic took some classic pics.
posted by Tim and Nic at
5:16 pm
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