OZ - Airlie Beach (East Coast Antics)

Licking an ants bum!
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HARVEY BAY ==> AIRLEE BEACH

Continuing our journey up the east coast our next destination was Airlee Beach home to the Whitsundays, a collection of remote islands with spectacular beaches.

Not sparing a moment we got straight onto the boat accompanied by 17 other hopeful sightseeers. Hayley, Rich and myself were armed with 24 cans, 5litres of 'cheap plonk', 1 litre of factor 30+ sun screen, and cameras at the ready.

We set sail using the outboard (motor), then once clear of the habour managed to get the sail up. The boat was a huge 40ft and came with skipper George, Andy the general helper and Maison the chef, who managed to cook amazing meals despite the waves.

The ant ready for licking
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Rich and I were ready as deck hands, pulling in or releasing sail lines, anchors and various over sailing duties which I have absolutly no idea about. But it was fun....

We anchored on a small beach and grabbed a snorkel and mask. However just prior to us all jumping in George, with a slight smirk, said we all had to wear a something whilst in the water. Expecting some sort of advertising T-shirt, we were actually issued an all-in-one 'glamourous' stinger suit. Covering our entire bodies it wass designed to prevent serious injury from tiny stingers which you cant see! (In case you ask....none of us decided to take photos of these suits....)

View of Whitehaven Beach from viewing platform
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Swimming by the coral we were immediatly surrounded by thousands of fish of all colours, sizes and varieties. Friendlier fish even decided to have a go at some of the cuts I had picked up along the way.

Back onto the boat we headed for the famous Whitehaven Beach. After landing the boat and treking over a small hill Andy stopped us for an Ant arse licking experience. Thinking he was more insane than we already suspected we said "Alright, you go first to him". Not expecting him to be for real - he did, describing the flavours during the process. Rich and I stepped up and gave it a go tasting an acidic sweet and sour flavour (see picture).

The beach
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Moving on before arriving at the actual beach we took a glimpse of the entire bay from the viewing platform.

The beach was great with crystal clear waters. Sand sharks circled us where we stood just a few feet from shore. We also had manta rays swiming around us. It wasnt until I got back on to the boat to find out they were in fact sting rays, capable of serious amounts of pain if stung.

After Whitehaven beach and a quick visit to some Aboriginal caves with questionable 'authentic' drawings, and a few nights sleeping out on deck we headed back to the habour.

Mantaray....or is that a stingray!!!
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Arriving back to land and checking into a hostel we met our room mates for the week. Louisa, a Worthing girl joined our group however to her sins had already met a totally mad tom-boy Irish girl. Not realising how insane this girl was at this point, invited us all to watch her enter the jelly wrestling competition. Showing us her bruises from the previous games we knew it would be good entertainment as she was definitly in-it-to-win-it - a $500 prize, about 300pnds!

With 7 hopefuls, the object was to pull off two arm and leg bands. It was funny to see how at first the girls were playful.

Sandshark circling us
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Something would snap inside, and the thought of the money must have taken control....Suddenly they were not so playful pulling, tearing and riping hair, clothes, arms, legs, the judge, anything getting in the way of winning. Our mad Irish girl managed to get into the semi finals and we thankfully thought we might see the last of her.

The next day Hayley our companion for the past week or so had to fly back to Brisbane. After dropping her off at the airport we pulled into a music shop. 30 minutes later we had a new companion. I was the proud owner of a Valencia guitar complete with lesson books. Strumming away by the pool, managing to annoying pretty much everyone, I got the right 'finger action' and had a few tunes under my belt. Quite lucky really as I was counting down the time until Rich was going to wrap it around my head.

Sailing into the sunset
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Back in our hostel room we met a couple of German guys and began drinking el'cheapo wine with them. After a couple of hours Rich had the cunning plan to go out dressed in Toga's. The rest of the night we partied it up around town with us four guys dressed as Toga's and Louisa opting to go more conservitvely. A wet t-shirt competition, stumbling over our outfits and running away from Mad Irish all occured during the night.

Thinking we really had seen the last of Mad Irish, she came bundling into our room at 8am saying she had been arrested! In a nutshell -> She was with some guys, one of the guys claimed she stole his wallet, police arrived, arrested her, in cell over night, told to be in court 9am Monday.

Sailing into the sunset
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Dealing already with a hangover this was sending us all over the edge. Listening whilst drifting in and out of sleep her denials and innocense until we heard the worlds "Oh, and I have put all your names down as witness saying i was with you....". "Erm...excuse me?" I said. Explaining that we couldn't as we didn't see most of the night she relunctantly agreed.

Thankfully she soon disappeared whilst we digested what we had heard, sleeping. What could we do?

Later in the afternoon she came back annoucing she had misteriously 'found' the wallet in some random bush, questionable concidering how many bushes were around. Discovering Louisa had her card missing also, we opted to get out of the situation and move to another hostel up the road. Thankfully we heard nothing more of her. She truly was a mad insane person.

Questionable aboriginal artwork in some caves
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Wanting to free our car up we needed to sell some boogie boards kindly given to us. Deciding the bars were our best place to start we stumbled across a table full of guys drinking. Convincing them the delights of owning two shinny Buzz Lightyear boards we somehow managed to get roped into entering their toad racing team. Rich went for toad no.2 and I was no.3 with 12 other toads all gearing for starters orders (well a large bucket over the lot of them). The starting line fell - bucket removed, and they were off.......well standing still actually. It must have been quite a sight as there were 15 of us were huddled around an enclosure screaming and shouting at the poor toads who didnt have a care in the world. But suddenly one lept away, making a mad dash for the exit leaving the others behind. Rich's one had won, the rest didnt even move!

One of the guys helping us sell the boards to some possible customers....
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Rich with the good luck went off and managed to sell our boards to some other punters.

That night we managed to get a free night accomodation and food for cleaning out an ice box, with promises of more free stuff if we could do some garden maintenance. Thinking we had to move on as there was little to do daytime in Airlee, we put up a sign advertising our drive to Cairns sharing petrol. A French guy and Japanese guy telephoned and we we soon left for our 8hour journey, departing Airlee slightly relieved.