Airlie Beach
50% of the town name is accurate and it's not "beach"
July 1999

You may be wondering about the title above. I felt as a useful tool to travellers I should dispel certain myths about Australia, it's areas, and so forth.

One of these I felt had to be a mention about Airlie Beach. There isn't one. Beach that is. Well, okay there is one but it's tiny and scrappy and generally not worth mentioning in the name of the town.

The town is largely used as a base for people exploring the Whitsunday Islands, which I never actually got around to going to, as a) I was short of cash, and b) I left early to go to Cairns to meet Lindsey for our diving. Even if you don't go to the Whitsundays though, the area is still quite nice.

Mike, Kev and myself spent a week or so, doing very little except recovering from out body-boarding injuries, lazing by the pool and trying to work out what to do next. Or rather Mike and I did, as Kev went off to do his open water qualification for a few days, so we wandered about in a desultory fashion and occasionally went to the pub.

We stayed at Reef O's Resort, just out of the town which was a pleasant timber-chalet kind of place with an unpleasant lounge-singer who would murder popular songs in the evenings. The hostel had it's own bar cum restaurant cum general veranda-type place to hang around which was good, but unfortunately not large enough to get out of range of the singer. And the fact that the man cropped up with the regularity usually reserved for Australian TV soaps, was less than welcome.

There was a Trivia night though but I think he still "performed" afterwards. I can't quite remember. It may be post-traumatic amnesia...

Despite this we still had a good time, seemingly borne out by the smiling shot of myself and Mike in our chalet. Although Mike pretending to be scared of the automatic countdown on the digital camera was amusing too...

Left is a shot of Airlie Beach from the walk we kept taking into town. There were buses run into town from the hostel every hour, but we inevitably either missed them or queued for them when the bus was full. And it was nice to walk anyway.

I did have another four shots initially on this page but after closer inspection I realised that they're all from Byron Bay, so I moved them. This does obviously leave me a little short of imagery on this page, but I'll sacrifice balance for accuracy this time....

After Airlie I left Mike and Kev and headed up to Cairns to meet Lindsey for our advanced divers. Unfortunately soon after I arrived the digital camera went belly up for reasons I still don't understand. At least it works again now, but this is why there aren't that many pictures on the next page (ostensibly about Cairns).

© Barny Russell 2005