The Great Australian Road Trip, Part II

DAY 2: 13 April
The next morning, I cooked breakfast on the tailgate while Ben packed up the camper.  Then we got back on the road and drove a couple more hours south on the sugarcane flanked highway.  There were a lot of narrow-gauge railroad tracks paralleling and crossing the road; they're used to transport cane from the fields, presumably to wherever they distribute it or refine the sugar.  There really isn't much else up there in rural North and Central Queensland between the main towns.  I can't imagine how immensely boring it would be to actually live there.

Driving the jank-mobile.  Yes, the driver sits on the right.  Notice the pillow where the airbag should be.

Our next stop, where we spent most of the day, was the Whitsunday region.  The Whitsundays are an archipelago of tropical islands, a stones throw from the Great Barrier Reef.  They are home to some of the best--and most remote--beaches in Australia.  We're talking caribbean quality white sand and crystal blue water.  You access the islands from a town called Airlie Beach (pronounced 'erly').

The beach at Airlie Beach

Ben and I had been slightly misinformed as to exactly how the boat situation worked for getting to the islands.  We were under the impression there was a frequent ferry schedule.  But in actuality, only a couple boats go each day.  We popped into a travel agency and booked an outrageously expensive half-day cruise that left within an hour of our arrival (luckily we didn't dawdle getting there).  Of course, it would turn out to be worth every penny.

The cruise out to the islands took a couple hours.  It seems the 'Greenberg rainy weather curse'--the same one that makes the skies open up the minute our family crosses the New Hampshire border to go camping--was in effect, because it started to rain the minute we got to the marina.  So, although the views were nice on the way out, the sea was very choppy and I elected to sleep instead of getting seasick (I was tired, anyway).  The waves calmed down a bunch once we were within the islands, but the toddler sitting next to me still managed to puke on my backpack (poor kid).  When his mother apologized, I assured her the backpack had seen worse, and it was no big deal.

The boat anchored for a short stay at Whitehaven beach, the place Ben and I really wanted to go on the largest island.  There is no dock or infrastructure on the island save for a latrine because it's a national park, so the boat had to stay about 100 meters away form the shore.  Most people waited and took the tender to shore, but the captain gave us the option to swim instead.  In fact, he let us jump from the top deck of the boat!  Ben, myself, and one old guy were the only souls brave enough for this 5+ meter drop.  It wasn't scary, but there was definitely enough time during the fall for my brain to register that it was in mid air. Really cool.  As you can see, they gave us singer suits because it's still jellyfish season, although they really were unnecessary because I didn't see a single jellyfish.  But we looked ridiculously awesome in them, so it wasn't a total waste.

The stinger suit didn't quite fit...

The sand on Whitehaven beach is superfine pure white silica.  It's tenacious stuff, and it gets into all your nooks and crannies, but its really soft.  It's so smooth, in fact, it makes that gym floor squeak when you walk on it.  We built a sandcastle while reminiscing about our childhoods.  Then we took a short barefoot hike up to a rock outcropping in the center of the island.  Ben has hobbit-strong feet that don't seem to feel pain, but I managed to get a few sharp rocks lodged in my foot.  We saw a lizard on the trail and a whole swarm of blue butterflies.  Anyways, almost the instant we got to the top the Greenberg curse reversed and the sun exploded out from the clouds to reveal some of the most picturesque vistas I've ever seen.  We didn't stay too long, knowing the boat could very well leave without us and we'd be castaways on the remote island, but we had a short photo shoot before finishing the loop back down to the beach.

Whitehaven beach.

You're never too old to build a sand castle!

View from the top of Whitsunday Island

Me, duh.

I thought this was a cool contrast.

Toes in the sand.

I left a message for the next Jew that visits Whitehaven beach.

Luckily we didn't have to swim back to the boat.  The ride back was amazing.  It was really choppy still, and the boat was rocking to hell and back, but I didn't get sick.  The inflatable tender followed us back part of the way and the driver was jumping it all over the waves like a jet ski, which looked really fun but also dangerous.  Ben and I had been wondering why it had such a large outboard just to take people back and forth to the beach, but this answered our question.  As the rain cleared for a second time, there was a full rainbow across the entire sky.  The sun was peaking majestically through a hole in the clouds and shining wide bands of light onto the blue water below.  It was really an incredible sight.

Watch the kamikaze boat pilot jump the Whitsundays waves!

Rainbow!

Ben's camera takes really good panoramas.  Here's me looking out at the wake behind the boat.

Y va el sol.

We got back to shore (raining briefly, again) around 6 and got back into the van.  We were way behind schedule distance-wise at this point, so we elected to keep driving until dinner.  We drove to Mackay and bought dinner at the supermarket.  We attempted to find a park to cook it in, but all the places the GPS took us to were really sketchy so we set up under a canopy on the top floor of a car park (parking garage) instead and had a really filling meal.  This is the lot where Ben practiced hill starts (pretty well, I might add) on the ramp.  Already at this point he was much better at clutch control.

"Camp janky," located under a canopy in a car park.

We spent the rest of the night driving until we were both too tired to keep going.  We ended in Rockhampton, which was to be our touring site for the next morning.  The location the GPS took us to when we typed in "Rockhampton" was just a random intersection, so we had to drive around in circles a little bit to find a good place to camp for the night.  We ended up in a small boat launch parking next to a river, adjacent to a large (noisy) bridge that crossed that river.  Again, exhausted, we slept.  It was a great day, even though we still hadn't made up enough ground to make up for the long stop and Whitsunday cruise.  Already on the second day I was starting to feel like we'd been on the road for a very long time.