Our week at Airlie Beach & Hamilton Island (3)

MONDAY 24th Feb

Kelly drove the buggy over to the bakery at the marina and brought back coffees and lots of pastries and pies. We sat on the balcony and made a start on them and this attracted a few cockatoos. I shooed them off but noticed that one of them was eating a grape, which I then discovered had been fed to it by Asher, who didn't understand what a bad idea it was to encourage the birds.

Kelly, Miller and Asher then went out for a ride on the buggy while Jo and I decided to get showered and changed, but, before we did that, Jo carefully took the plates of pastries and pies off the table on the balcony, covered them in clingfilm and put them on the kitchen table which was well back from the balcony and past the TV viewing area.

After our showers we came back to the kitchen to discover that the cheeky, greedy birds had not been at all deterred and had helped themselves to a feast:

After clearing up the mess and securing all the bifold doors, Jo and I went for a walk - out to the marina then up the steep hills to a couple of viewpoints:

The middle photo above shows Catseye Bay and our accommodation building. Turning the camera round:

There were also plenty of these signs around:

Kelly kept the boys on the move - to Wildlife Adventures and other attractions and I joined Kelly and Asher later at one of the resort pools and a dip in the warm ocean - on second thoughts, that was yesterday. When the tide went out you could walk out as far as you liked. There were warnings of "seasonal stingers", it being the wet season, but there was no sign of any jellyfish and nobody was put off going in the sea.

Today we tried one of the other resort pools - a larger one with a swim-up tiki bar in the middle. One great thing about Hamilton Island is that all the resort pools are freely available to all - you don't have to be resident at that particular resort.

TUESDAY 25th Feb

We had hoped to get the boys on the Kids' ATV's but when we got there we discovered that it was only open on Mondays so we did the go-karts instead. We did the safety drill then squeezed these Formula One style giant helmets on - they were hot, heavy and sweaty. The karts had to be driven by adults so we had to ride on dual steering ones which were exceptionally heavy - especially round the tight bends:

Kelly really wanted the boys to experience a ride in an ATV. The only one available was a 4-seater driven by an instructor/tour guide round the island so Jo and I decided to leave and tackle the trail walks. The boys seemed to have a great time and were impressed to see where Johnny Depp filmed Pirates of the Carribean 5 and also saw where other famous stars - like Oprah Winfrey and Taylor Swift - had recently stayed.

We managed just one short dusty, hilly trail walk to Hideaway Bay:

There were warning notices about sharks and jellyfish and also this unusual one:

We had been scrutinising the weather forecasts as there was a tropical cyclone developing off the North Queensland coast and we were sailing back to the mainland tomorrow (Wednesday) before flying back to Adelaide on Friday. Albert was the first named cyclone of the season - thankfully it stayed well offshore but it could have had some effect on wave conditions - we would see tomorrow.