Airlie Fairy

Dragging our luggage to the station we were on board and ready to leave at 9am and thanks to our 'luxury travel pack' from the airplane were able to sit back in comfort on the Sunlander train - a great silver steel giant that has been running for 60 years although it's being retired in 2013.. Trailing for miles the coastline I'd hoped to see was hidden behind hundreds of km of sugar cane. We pulled in to Proserpine that evening and gladly my cousin was there to pick us up as we'd be staying with her family for a bit. We stayed up a while that night, few drinks and catch up on the past 16 years since we'd met and other family life before retiring to a lovely proper bedroom.
Next morning I headed out with her husband for the first time and helped out at a few places near Airlie beach, the view from one being particularly beautiful and a healthy crop of avocados ripe for the picking in the front lawn - so we earnt a few. The next day was Amys birthday so we hammered out a few ideas of what to do that evening.. We headed off to Airlie in the car the next day and had a good trot around the seafront and some shops before heading back toward Proserpine and past the town to the airport - where wallabys could be seen in numbers along the roadside. As for dinner, we were in for a real treat - a fresh box of mud-crabs had been delivered to a family friend so we all set off to their house where we enjoyed a night of drinks and hammering away at the shells to get to the tender flesh - just as good in a sandwich as it was fresh out of the claw. To top it all off a wonderful ice-cream birthday cake came out, so making sure to stand closest to Amy while she cut it (if the knife touches the bottom you kiss the nearest guy!!) then all but those of us on diets tucked in to a 'sl-ice' ha ha..
So, expectedly, a few of us had a headache the next morning so we didn't do a lot that day, maybe a swim in the pool.. Come the weekend all felt back to normal, we headed to Airlie again to catch the small market near the seafront, though we arrived just as people were starting to pack up. Mostly the prices were out of our range anyhow but it was good to see. We moved from there up to Mount Rooper, overlooking the Whitsunday Islands but we could only take this view in once we'd conquered the 2.5km walk up along a trail through light forest. There were some great views on the way but it was hot!! Once we got to the top there was a viewing platform with a great view toward a few of the Isles. We headed down from there taking a different route, down past Shute Harbour and round the main road rather than back down through the forest, maybe a bit longer but worthwhile as we got to see the whole bay rather than be surrounded by trees.

Next day we set to the task of finding somewhere to stay in our next destination of Rockhampton, the cost of staying in hostels is exorbitant so we started to mail people through Couch Surfing, a web site where you can stay at someones house without charge. It's a great site and we'd hosted before in the past so felt our chances of finding somewhere were positive. Alongside this we also started looking to the future and how we were planning to travel New Zealand; ideally we'd be able to work somewhere in return for accommodation and possibly even food.. To do this we signed up for Work Away, which cost us a small fee however compared to the saving from not staying somewhere it'd soon pay off..

After a few days off I went back out in the field and helped out this time with some pretty different tasks, mostly hedge-trimming and collecting the cuttings, hot work in the baking sun. The weather took a turn after this and the rain that had mostly been reserved for the night time decided to stay into the day - two cyclones, one in the North toward Darwin was followed by another off the coast of Western Australia, dragging rain right across us both times.. This put paid to the idea of going cray-fishing which would have needed a still and clear night, fortunately however there was one in the freezer so we had the opportunity to try one out. It was a beautiful looking creature, and the tail was packed with gorgeous and giant sections of flesh. After a few more days and the release date of the new Twilight DVD it came to our time to leave and take our second train journey. No delays this time so we were packed up and ready to leave at roughly the same time we arrived. It had been a great time staying with the relatives, and I can't thank them enough for letting us stay and visit the area, it was nice to get out and see a bit more of the area which was truly beautiful, its vast valleys making a Kentish one look inferior in size!

This time was an overnight journey so once on board and waved off the lights soon dimmed and we'd attempt to sleep til we arrived in Rockhampton very early the next morning.