Our week at Airlie Beach & Hamilton Island - Day 1

FRIDAY 21st Feb

Chris kindly drove the 5 of us - me, Jo, Kelly and the boys - to the airport, leaving Old Noarlunga at 5 am. Chris didn't have enough leave left to join us for this holiday so he returned home to work - and also to oversee the work that was planned on the toilet block - while the rest of us were swanning away in North Queeensland again.

We flew in to the small but lovely Whitsunday Coast aiport (Proserpine):

It was a bit bumpy coming in and our pilot had to abort his first attempt at landing due to the high cross winds but we made it safely second time around.

The airport shuttle bus took about 40 mins to get us to our resort high up in Airlie Beach, overlooking the ferry port and marina. The 2 nights we had booked here had been done at the last minute as the original Air B&B that Kelly had booked was cancelled, as the property had been water damaged during the recent floods in the area.

I've commented before on how large Queensland is - Airlie Beach is almost 700 kms south of Port Douglas, where we had spent a week in January, but over 1,100 kms north of Brisbane. Definitely tropical.

Our resort was lovely and we had 2 adjacent rooms at the top of one of the buildings, each with large balconies that we could talk to each other from. The boys were very happy here - good wifi and an excellent pool and adjacent hot tub - what more could they want?

The restaurant and bar are next to the pool and are open fronted, but, happily with a decent roof to take the brunt of the regular fairly heavy showers we experienced on our first day. The rain never stopped anyone using the pool and hot tub, least of all our intrepid duo:

We took the resort shuttle bus downtown - a very short journey, but one that is very useful on the return back up the steep hill to the resort. Walking round the touristy town we came to the large outdoor lagoon style pool - similar to the one we had used in Cairns. Jo demonstrated the new top she had bought over her new swimsuit:

No restaurants for us in the evenings - the boys like to go online or watch a movie and snack/gorge in their apartments - and we were happy to do likewise, albeit with a couple of G & T's.