Advertisement
Published: October 27th 2007
Well our next stop on our campervan expedition was Airlie Beach, the self proclaimed 'Gateway to the Whitsundays'. Upon our arrival we though that we had perhaps taken the wrong turning as we seemed to have arrived in Magaluf! Airlie Beach is the complete opposite of anything we have so far come across in Australia, it seems to be a stag do/booze den. Having become accustomed to having huge stretches of beach almost to ourselves this was quite a shock!
We decided to book ourselves on a day trip out to the Whitsundays as we don't have the time or the money to hire ourselves a boat for a week which would no doubt be the best way to see the Islands. Having booked a trip that took in 2 Islands we rose early to get ready for our pick up and a nice day out at sea. The tour company however had other ideas! They decided to cancel the trip but not tell us! We later learned they had cancelled due to bad weather (they were the only compnay to do so that day....). This left us completley stuffed as we don't have time to re book as there
is still so much to do and so little time!
So we must be the only people to visit Airlie beach and not see the Whitsundays, maybe we will return one day for a normal holiday.
From here we headed down to a very small National Park called Cape Hillsborough. It is a small piece of land sticking out into the Ocean and a stunning piece of Australia. It has a beautiful bay area and some pristine rainforest which is abundant with wildlife. The undoubted highlight of this wildlife is the local Kangaroo and Wallaby population which come down to feed on the beach early in the morning every day. So we were up at 5.45am ready to see them and sure enough at exactly 6.30am they strolled out onto the beach and had a feed. They are very used to humans being in the area as one or two of them were hand reared by the campsite owners and then released into the wild. As a result they are very happy to come and sit next you and recieve a little scratch and stroke while they enjoy the morning sun and surf. Two of the Kangaroos even
swam across the sea from a nearby island to join the fun!!
We then had a massive drive down to Bundaberg (9 1/2hours!) and a visit to the famous (if you like rum!) Bundaberg Rum Distillery. The tour was actually very interesting even for non rum drinkers like us. Vicky found the smell of the Molasses mixed with the nearby smells of the cane mill a bit disgusting, she likened it to the smell of a nasty pub that hasn't been cleaned for a while!! We got to see the molasses vats that hold up to 5 million litres of the stuff! We viewed all the fermenting tanks and had a smell of the 74% proof pure rum that comes out of them..... The coolest bit was watching the bottling process in full flow. The tour finished with the obligstory tasting..... I actually enjoyed my Bundaberg Rum and Ginger Beer but Vicky didn't like her Rum and Coke and proceeded to do little rum burps for the next hour!!
We missed out Mackay and Rockhampton purely because we just don't have the time to stop everywhere. From Bundaberg we are pottering down to Hervey Bay and a visit
to Fraser Island and some Whale Watching......
Advertisement
Tot: 0.558s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 18; qc: 70; dbt: 0.0806s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
