Mission Beach and Airlie Beach

We arrived in Mission Beach after Cairns and spent two really relaxing days here, being lazy and lounging by the pool and on the beach. While here we visited a rescue wildlife centre where we got to hold baby wallabies and kangaroos, as well as lizards and snakes, though only Eli was brave enough to have the 2 metre long python put round her neck! Later that day we took a walk into the rainforest and went swimming in one of the creeks, though all the while keeping one eye out for crocodiles!

Eli and the snake. Her face says it all.

After Mission Beach we took a 12 hour bus journey to Airlie Beach, which was eventful to say the least. On the way there, the temperature outside was so high (40C to be exact) that the bus overheated and broke down, meaning we had to change buses half way through the journey. As if this wasn't bad enough, the bus driver then told us that no more buses would be running because of the floods down south so we would be stuck in Airlie Beach for a week! Luckily it's a really great place with loads to do, so getting stuck here was actually not so bad at all.

In Airlie, we visited the infamous Whitsunday Islands - a collection of 72 islands off the coast of Queensland. We took a tiny speed boat there which was so much fun but absolutely crazy coming back as the weather had turned and the waves were huge. On the tour we got to go around some of the islands and go snorkelling, hoping to fulfill our ongoing quest to see a turtle but once again we had no such luck. We then travelled to Whitsunday Island itself, home to Whitehaven Beach which is absolutely breathtaking - the photos below really don't do it justice. If you had to envision paradise this is probably the closest you'd get. We got to relax and spend the afternoon there taking in the amazing views and feeding the fish.

 

The unbelievable view of Whitsunday Island from the Hill Inslet lookout

We spent some of the rest of the days at the lagoon, which was one of the strangest things we've ever encountered. Imagine Hyde Park with a giant swimming pool in the middle, with water the temperature of the bath and that's where we were!

As we still had a lot of time to kill we took a day trip to Daydream Island which was a really fun day out. The main event of the day was our very competitive game of mini golf. It was a close call but in the end Chessie won by 1 point, with a solid score of 25 over par. Later we visited the lagoon to see the sharks and on our walk back to the boat we were accompanied by a kangaroo - our first sighting of a wild one, which got us far too over excited! The island also had a huge kids play area, which we definitely did not play on...

Game faces on for crazy golf