That morning we decided to go on a short hike to one of the beaches on the other side of the famous Mother Beddrock. Since we were going to the beach we opted not to take our camera, which was the wrong decision, because there was noone at the beach to take it and there were some nice sights to take pictures of. We ended up in Murray Bay which was a small secluded beach at the edge of a private property. We went for a snorkel since we had our gear with us now that we owned the gear. It was a refreshing activity after the hike and in the morning with a few interesting fish, but nothing like on the reef, but we had expected that. Bowen has many little secluded beaches and it was a nice visit.

Then we were headed down to the major tourist destination, Airlie Beach, the depot for the Whit Sunday Islands. On the way we flew by the big mango, and didn’t stop, which I wasn’t particularly happy about, even though it didn’t look very impressive from the glimpse I got.  It was just a discoloured misshaped spherical thing. Australia is full of “big things” which by definition the thing has to be bigger than the real thing which people built to attract tourists to make money since in most places there is nothing there. Some of these are so unimpressive you don’t even realize it is a big thing like the big Captain Cook in Cairns.

We found a nice campsite which ended up being the best one we stayed at the whole trip. There was a bouncy pillow which is great fun, mini golf, a pool and even outdoor movies at night. Of course they play only kiddie movies but seeing Bee Movie was okay. I could have stayed there all day but we went to town where we had a barbecue by the beach.

Australia is renown for its barbecues but they don’t barbecue with coals like the Americans do.  Instead barbecues are basically smooth steel grill plates that fry the food more than barbecue it but they are free and clean in many public places so we took advantage of them.
The town of Airlie Beach itself is not impressive, just a bunch of tourist stores where I bought myself a hat, to keep the sun off my face and neck and tourist tour centres where they sell you tours. We went into one of the tour centres and looked through the brochures on all the different trips we could do around the Whit Sunday Islands. We spent a great deal deliberating and comparing prices of tours. We wanted something that would only take one day and be good value for money and settled on the Fury which is the high speed rafting boat which would take us snorkelling and to the famous Whitehaven Beach. We booked the tour for the next day.

There are also lots of insects all over Australia, more so than in other places I feel and this ant is just one of the many we saw.

We spent the day in Townsville and were really surprised at what a nice town it was. I know there is rivalry between Cairns and Townsville and Cairns people believe it is so much prettier but my unbiased vote is for Townsville. We visited the Townsville museum which was actually really nice and gave us something to do. Unlike the rest of the tourists we did not go to Magnetic Island, which we do regret, but we decided to save some cash and since we were definitely going to go to Frazer Island we figured we didn’t need to go to every Island.

Townsville Jungle Gym

Then we drove down to Bowen, where we had trouble finding a campsite since they were either full or no one answered at reception. At least there were a lot there so we found one that was open but it was the oddest campsite we had been to. It was full of travellers who were fruit picking and huge groups of them were sleeping in tents and under tarps, so it wasn’t the cleanest campsite we stayed at nor was it too cheap.

We went grocery shopping which was quite handy in the van because instead of having to unload groceries from a car to the house we just moved them from the cart into our “house.” I loved having a fridge and kitchen in the vehicle, because it was so convenient. If we were hungry we’d just pull over and make lunch. That’s probably the only thing that was handy on the van though.