Airlie ... WTF, why didn't anyone say that you can't swim in the ocean here?!?

Welcome to the Whitsundays. Land of beautiful white sandy beaches and turquoise waters… which you can’t swim in. The waters here are filled with jellyfish, including Irukandji and box both of whose stings can be fatal. So, in order to go swimming in the ocean, you need to wear a ‘stinger suit’. They are usually a 3mm wet suit, or sometimes a thinner lycra version. They are supposed to limit the surface area exposed to potential stings. However, your feet, hands and neck/head are still exposed. We didn’t rent a suit so we couldn’t even swim in the ocean. The great thing about the city is that they built a huge lagoon a few feet from the ocean to serve as the local swimming hole. The lagoon is nearly the ideal swimming pool, it’s surrounded by palm trees, green space with sand and there is a separate kid’s pool too! There are showers, toilets, water fountains and plenty of little shops to eat at; everything that you need to stay for the whole afternoon. The only downside is that the pool is only about 5’10” deep at the maximum and with the high temperatures and strong sunlight it gets to body temperature or even warmer. It’s not really a great place for cooling off.

We couldn’t get onto our sail ship for a few days because the first sailings were booked. Instead of spending the extra days around Sydney, we thought that we could spend them diving on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and swimming in the ocean. As it turns out, there are no day trips from Airlie to the GBR. The town is set up great for sailing but not diving. To do a diving here you have to do a live a board. We were disappointed the travel agent didn’t tell us these things before we came, and if we knew, we would have made other plans. We checked into our hostel, the ‘Backpackers by the bay’ which is a dirty little mini-motel. The staff was fun and hosted trivia night and they showed movies at night until the screen broke (like many of the things at the hostel).

We spent the next 5-6 days wandering around town, hanging out at the lagoon and using the internet to plan the next parts of our trip and our return home. Ewa managed to get thrown out of a coffee shop for spending nearly 1.5 hours there and having only purchased two coffees while using their ‘free wifi’. The barista was very rude and insisted that she buy a meal in order to stay in the café and at $14+ for even a sandwich that wasn’t going to happen. Other than that, nothing remotely exciting happened.

The day before we sailed, we changed hotels because the tour operator provided accommodation the night before and after the sailing. The ‘Wander’s Resort’ wasn’t any better than the Backpackers we had just left behind. At night we even had to defend ourselves against several small spiders (potentially life threateningly poisonous in Chad’s paranoid mind) and one huge, nearly fist sized spider. We spent 10 minutes trying to kill the large spider with the toilet scrub brush, but the spider was too quick and we were too scared to get too close. We eventually managed to kill it by throwing a towel over the spider to trap it and then smashing all over the towel just to make sure we got it!

The Sollaway Las

The next evening we boarded the Solway Lass, a 109 year old tall ship. Neither of us had ever been on a tall ship before and we were excited. There were about 25 guests and 6 crew members on the 2 day/2 night trip. We departed for the Whitsundays area that evening. The weather wasn’t very good and the forecast for the remainder of the trip wasn’t any good either which seems to be a trend with our “water excursions” (Hurricanes in Vietnam/ Storms in Thailand). Apparently a cyclone was headed towards us and we were expecting 30 knot winds. So that evening since we were rained out from the deck we went to bed early hoping for at least some sunshine the next day. A lot of people were sea sick the night before and most of the first day on the open sea. We had a few nauseating moments but for the most part we were ok, staying on the deck where there was fresh air and a horizon.

We visited Whitehaven beach which was the whitest and most beautiful beach we have ever seen. The sand is extremely fine and soft and sticks to your skin like it’s holding on for dear life. We got to take some amazing pictures from a view point area above the beach of the moving sands against the turquoise water, it was amazing. The guides told us that they frequently see huge Manta rays gliding through the shallow waters! Chad didn’t feel like swimming but Ewa got on her suit and spent a good half an hour jumping waves and enjoying the water. After the swim we made our way back to the group to relax under the shade of a tree until it was time to head back to the boat. Not many people accounted for the harshness of the sun’s rays, combined with the reflection off the water and the white sand – there were a lot of sunburned body parts. We got sunburned but were quite lucky that it wasn’t as bad as some other people, one guy from Sweden burned his face so bad that his forehead was blistering and oozing puss the next day! Yikes. Australia definitely has the harshest sun in the world. The rest of the day we relaxed had great food that the on board chef prepared fresh and enjoyed a few beers provided by the ships wench. Yup, they actually called her a wench, all in good fun! In the evening the boys put on their stinger suits and jumped from the ships swing rope to cool off, Chad even climbed the rope to jump off and jumped off the front of the ship. The weather seemed to be getting better and we spent the evening on the deck talking to the other guests. Our last day and night on the ship was going to be fun, it was Chads birthday! When we were still in Airlie, Ewa went to the company to make sure that Chad would have a cake on his birthday; it’s not every day that you turn 30! During the day we went to explore one of the reefs along the islands that were in the area.

Whithaven beach

We went snorkelling and also went for one dive. We were looking forward to diving the Great Barrier Reef for a long time and since we couldn’t get too far out, this was going to have to do. We were still on the reef and happy that we could do even one dive. The snorkelling was great too, it was very amazing to see the amount and variation of fish life and the coral was beautiful. Our dive went smoothly, it was a bit murky because of the weather. We even took our camera diving since the max depth we would be going to would be 14m. We took lots of pictures and even two videos. After we had dinner, the captain announced that someone would get whipped! On our first day, he had explained that if anyone disobeyed the marine park rules that they would get flogged, some of the offences are no big deal like for example bringing sand onto the boat, that can get cleaned up – some big offences are taking shells or coral from the beaches (along with flogging it is a $3000.00 Aus dollar park fine).

Diving the Great Barrier Reef

Ewa wasn’t sure if Chad had yet caught on that it was him, but only because it was his birthday! The crew gave him some beats and even gave Ewa the whip to hit Chad too (unfortunately she actually hit him on his burn) and then the chef came out with a cake for Chad lit with candles and everything! The entire boat sang Happy Birthday to him! And to top it off, they served the cake with ice cream. We stayed up that night chatting with other guests and getting travel advice on India from other backpackers. On the last day of the sailing trip we slept in until 8:30 and spent the morning on an island jungle trek and hung out on a beach. It was sad to know we had to get off the boat that day and would be leaving Australia soon. We spent our last night in Airlie beach at the spider resort again and the next day flew back to Sydney. We got in pretty late and headed straight to our fav restaurant Spice I am for a quick bite before heading off to bed, Ewa was surprised Chad could even sleep because the next day the only thing on the itinerary was to see Avatar on the largest IMAX screen in the world! We spent the morning enjoying coffee and walking to the IMAX picking up last minute supplies for India along the way. We had a nice picnic on the harbour before the movie and then spent 3 hours in front of an 8 storey screen watching Avatar in 3D. What an awesome flick. We headed back to the hotel and caught the train to the airport where we were catching our first Emirate airlines flight to Bangkok on our way to India.

Airlie ... WTF, why didn't anyone say that you can't swim in the ocean here?!?

Airlie Beach, Austria