Gill's Blog: Airlie Beach and Whitsunday Islands

After leaving Mackay on Saturday we headed north again to Airlie Beach, the further north we go the more tropical of course and we loved the drive between Mackay and Airlie, lots of cane fields and undulating roads. Airlie Beach is lovely, touristy but enjoyable, we have spent our days taking Bentley for a walk and a dip at the harbour in the mornings and heading into town for shops, walks and coffees later and afternoons relaxing in the van with the air con on, but today, Tuesday was our day to visit the Whitsunday Islands, lots of day trips available and took us a while to decide but eventually we decided on an island hopper pass on the ferry which allowed us to visit two islands, Hamilton and Daydream. We left Bentley in the van, with the air con on of course and the key with the Manager who said he would keep an eye on him....

Our plan was to get the 8.20am ferry to Hamilton and they insist you are there 30 mins before departure so we arrived at the port at 5 to 8 and they said we could board the boat Great Barrier Reef that was heading out at 8 am, so we stepped on and of it went, this was a bigger boat than the ferry and after stopping at Hamilton Island it was heading out to the reef boat for diving etc. as we were departing the boat the captain announced that there was a shuttle bus to see the island and also you could hire a golf buggy, well that sound fantastic and once we had landed off Brian and I went to hire a buggy, $57 for two hours and we zoomed around, great fun, much better than a Shuttle Bus, got ourselves a take away coffee and just enjoyed ourselves driving around. Lots of villas and resorts to stay at, would be good to stay overnight sometime. There was a coffee shop, Bakery, Fish and Chips, boutiques in the Marina area. We spent 3 hours on Hamilton Island and then headed on the Ferry to Daydream, we knew we didn't have much time there only about an hour as we wanted to get the 1.55pm ferry back and that would get us back to Airlie at 2.25pm meaning Bentley had been left 7 hours which we thought was long enough. First we headed to the south of the island and the bakery and were able to get a ride on the resort buggy as it was a bit of a walk and then back to the marina after a quick lunch, we felt we had enough time to look around the resort before the ferry arrived so we headed in and took photos etc and I said we had better head back so we walk back to the Marina and saw the Ferry was in and we started to run, one of the Staff said if it's the ferry you want you missed it.............. But she looked at the ferry and the captain was on the upper deck and she got his attention and we were allowed on, they had to put the gangplank down etc, it was really just ready to sail, so lucky we got on, the next Ferry was another hour and that meant Bentley would have been 8 hours in the van!!

So our day started with being able to get the earlier boat and finished with nearly missing the Ferry a great day, we both enjoyed and Bentley was fine when we got back, very pleased to see us