Thursday 7th August to Saturday 9th August – Airlie Beach
The bus journey from Hervey Bay to Airlie was, as I expected, slightly traumatic. Actually it wasn’t too bad but I didn’t really sleep. At one point myself and Josh (a friendly very talkative soul on the bus) got off for a cigarette when it stopped. The first driver had been very friendly and had no issue with us doing so but this driver seemed less than happy about the idea. We were stood there and then the bus started driving off. Initially we thought he was having a comedy moment, you know the one where you leave one of your friends, start driving off and then stop and go, “mwa ha”. It turned out he wasn’t and he seriously laid into Josh who was infront of me. We were well and truly told!
When we arrived in Airlie beach it was beautiful sunshine and really hot. I checked into Beaches backpackers’ which is a partner hostel of the one I stayed at in Hervey Bay. I was having a coke in the bar deciding whether or not to go and have a nap and got talking to a couple of guys from Estonia and a seriously drunk Kiwi guy whose Birthday it was. They seemed to think that it would be rude for me not to join them so I obliged and the afternoon with a few games of pool quickly turned into a lot more pool, a few more drinks and a night out in one of the clubs in Airlie.
On Friday I went and booked my sailing trip and pottered, rather slowly in dark sunglasses, round the town. I went down to the lagoon which was nice in a kind of, ‘our beach isn’t great so let’s dump loads of concrete here and make a better one’, way. Actually that’s probably a bit harsh, the lagoon is nice really. I spent much of the evening tryiny to upload photographs. This used a lot of time and was amazingly unsuccessful so I eventually gave up and went to bed.
On Saturday I sorted myself out, packed my bag for the boat and checked in for the sailing. The walk to the boat takes you around the headland and there were some great views out over town and the marina. After a little while, and having stopped at the wrong point, I got to the cafe where we were to be met for our boat, the Atlantic Clipper, and waited patiently with the group.