September 25-27
When I woke up about midday in Airlie Beach, disoriented as to exactly where we were and what was going on, I looked out the back of the old beater to see resorts and vacation homes sprouting from green hills and a full marina sitting over opal waters. We were in the Whitsundays, known as one of the most beautiful places in Australia. It definitely was. We drove around town, finding that there was actually no beach on the mainland (only on the boat-accessible islands nearby). After securing a campsite, we rolled back into town to find a bar to watch the AFL (Australian Rules Football League) grand final (championship). There were a couple of bars filled with loyal fans to either St. Kilda or Collingwood (boo...) and we picked one on the sole basis that it was closest to the van and had a bartender who was throwing bottles around like nobody's business. Anyway, the 4th quarter ended with the two teams tied. We figured we would grab another beer for overtime when people started to leave. There's no overtime in footy. The two teams would play, again, the next Saturday. Great.
The next day, after realizing we had missed any shot at getting out to the islands and the famous Whitehaven Beach, we screwed around for most of the day and I managed to do a half hour or so of fishing. Caught a handful of fish that aren't worth mentioning, and this was my last one:
Very interesting coloring, but what was crazy was that while reeling it in, a bigger garfish attacked it and just wouldn't let go. This is a garfish (obviously not my picture):
It eventually did loosen its clamp when the two fish were almost at my feet, and slowly swam off on the water's surface. For the afternoon, we drove up a dirt road to a local swimming hole/water fall, kicked back with a couple brews and enjoyed the sun (probably too much - imagine in Billy Madison when he "falls asleep" by the pool for a few hours before dinner with all his dad's clients).
We headed over to Conway Beach before sunset and found a mucky, mussel-covered river mouth at low tide. I tiptoed through a colony of thousands of little crabs, can't tell you what they were, and took a few casts with the fishing rod. I didn't catch anything and couldn't see much because the water was so muddy. However, about fifteen feet out from me, something fairly large and incredibly creepy poked a set of nostrils and eyes out of the water to look at me twice, quickly submerging again when it realized I was looking right at it. I still have no idea what it was, but my best guess was a dugong, the Australian sea cow/manatee (also obviously not my picture):
That night I had some more incredible fish and chips and a lovely chat with a random Australian couple on vacation. That night, we set out on our all-night, 8 hour drive down to Agnus Water & 1770. Hughesy and I took the first shift, or I took the wheel with Hughesy "spotting" (falling asleep) in the front seat. Hughesy took a quick shift, I passed out in the back and didn't wake up until midway through Chris and Gregg's shift. They got lucky and had so much fog you could only see a car length or two in front of the van. I didn't wake up again until we were in Agnus Water, parked by the beach with Chris and Gregg sleeping on the beach. Must've been a beautiful sight for the morning beach goers and surfers. We only spent the morning there, since there was nothing to be seen but the ocean and the sun (which was fine, but didn't offer a whole lot past swimming and tanning). We spent the rest of the day driving towards Rainbow Beach, which looks like its just down the coast a few hours. It's not. We drove all afternoon through what looked like the Great Plains (no longer 'Nam) and made a nice stop in the po-dunk town of Rosedale, which I think is where Deliverance was filmed, and later 8 mile road, which I think is where 8 Mile Road was filmed.. We also realized the van was absolutely guzzling gas. I mean making a Hummer look like a Prius. That evening the oil light came on as well. Great, so we are driving hours and hours to a place that might not even exist and the van is breaking down. Well we made it after almost running out of gas a couple times. The next day we figured out the van was sucking because the O/D Off light was on. We were driving on nothing but 100-110 km/hr highways without our top gear. No wonder.
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