July 15 – Tuesday
A warm morning with a bit of light drizzle while packing up. Only a short drive (150km) today to Airlie Beach. There has certainly been plenty of development in the area since we were here 25 years ago. The amount of accommodation available, and being built, is absolutely incredible. I’m not sure what all the tourists actually do when they are here, apart from drink! The town really reminded us of Phuket, with the accommodation places, small shops and very large, open bars. There are two different age groups – backpackers and retirees.
As it is becoming difficult to find sites in caravan parks the further north we travel, we have started booking ahead. Surprise, surprise! The caravan park we had booked at Airlie Beach turned out to be the one we had stayed in 25 years ago – and nothing much has been done to it since then. Frightfully expensive ($39 per night), dusty, poorly grassed sites with concrete slabs about 10cm above ground level just to make life difficult when placing the caravan on the site. When we arrived at our allocated site, another caravan was already on it. A very harassed couple had parked their van there because the site allocated to them was to small, their replacement site had a bus on it and they were getting a little stressed. They eventually asked for their money back and left. Neither of us have any burning desire to return to Airlie Beach again. We are used to theft warnings, however, the snake warning was a first!
A warm morning with a bit of light drizzle while packing up. Only a short drive (150km) today to Airlie Beach. There has certainly been plenty of development in the area since we were here 25 years ago. The amount of accommodation available, and being built, is absolutely incredible. I’m not sure what all the tourists actually do when they are here, apart from drink! The town really reminded us of Phuket, with the accommodation places, small shops and very large, open bars. There are two different age groups – backpackers and retirees.
As it is becoming difficult to find sites in caravan parks the further north we travel, we have started booking ahead. Surprise, surprise! The caravan park we had booked at Airlie Beach turned out to be the one we had stayed in 25 years ago – and nothing much has been done to it since then. Frightfully expensive ($39 per night), dusty, poorly grassed sites with concrete slabs about 10cm above ground level just to make life difficult when placing the caravan on the site. When we arrived at our allocated site, another caravan was already on it. A very harassed couple had parked their van there because the site allocated to them was to small, their replacement site had a bus on it and they were getting a little stressed. They eventually asked for their money back and left. Neither of us have any burning desire to return to Airlie Beach again. We are used to theft warnings, however, the snake warning was a first!
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