Airlie Beach Friday 3/14/08

We are rethinking our objection to being across the street from a huge gravel pit. The crew gets started over there at about 7:00 this morning and we count 6 huge diggers, each with a pair of those big mining dump trucks and bulldozers galore. The diggers fill up the trucks with the dirt where there will eventually be water (6 scoops per load), the trucks haul the dirt up to where the dirt is going to be land and dumps the load to be spread out by the dozers. While one truck is hauling, the other is being loaded and on it goes. It is fascinating in the same way as watching one of those cross sections of an ant colony at the zoo. We have had so many fabulous ocean views on this trip that this turns out to be an interesting diversion. We have never seen a harbor being made before.

We explore town this morning. Airlie Beach is a jumping off point to the 74 Whitsunday Islands just off shore and the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. We will be doing the reef during the last week of our trip and have little interest in the islands so this is a relax and read stop for us. The town is once again a collection of bars, restaurants and surf shops with the addition of dozens of boat-booking agents. There is a nice park at the rocky shoreline with a block-long man-made swimming lagoon. It is raining on and off and we are dodging rain as we duck in and out of the shops and book a sidewalk table for tonight at a nice restaurant. We finally decide to grab take-away lunch from a sandwich shop and head back to our room. Mary gets the smoked salmon on pumpkin bread and John has the roast beef and onion on Turkish bread and we have some chips and diet cokes in the room.

Mary watches a movie, John reads a book and late afternoon the sun peeks a bit and we go down to the pool for some lounging and a dip. Very exciting! Our table is booked for 7:00 and it is a pleasant walk into town center. Mary has the Mangrove Jack with leak-mashed and John has the lamb roast and we have a great bottle of Barossa Valley Shiraz. Our server, Jenny, is an Adelaide girl so she is big on the wines from her part of the country and she is right about this one.

How does the day end? Mary watches a movie and John reads a book. We can hardly wait for the heavy equipment to get started in the morning.

Today's local headline: Twenty-four hours to decision The Whitsunday Times (local elections are being held on Saturday)

Mid Coast Queensland Thursday 3/13/08

Today will be just like yesterday in terms of our goal—just get further up the road without getting killed. We have another 500 km to get to the south end of the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday Islands where we will spend the next three nights. The Travelodge proved to be adequate so we nibble some fruit and brekkie bars and get right back on the road.

There is one difference today and that is that there are no towns along this road. We finally stop for a break at a rest stop and as we re-enter the road one sign points behind us 170 km to Rockhampton and the other points ahead 160 km to Mackay There have been a couple "petrol" stations but they are few and far between. This is again farm country, mostly sugar cane, and we wonder where the "bush" folks gor for groceries and how the kids get to school. About 30 km short of Mackay we stop in Sarina, our first available food stop and "food stop" is an exaggeration. At a coffee shop we get take away chicken, tomato and cheese sandwiches that look like you would see in the school cafeteria being eaten by the kid whose mom didn't love him. There is a sign that says "homemade sausage rolls - $2.50" so John gets one of those too. Nothing in Australia is $2.50. A small coke is $3.20, a small tap beer in a bar is $4.00, parking meters are $3.00 an hour, to say nothing of $12 per pack ciggies, and any cocktail in a bar is $16. Not only is the sausage roll huge, but it is stuffed with sausage in a flakey puff pastry and is wrapped in a wax paper bag that is immediately soaked in grease. It's really good. A walk around town is required after we eat.

We decide to get some supplies and gas when we get to Mackay and between dealing with too much traffic and being lost we spend almost two hours doing chores that should take 30 minutes. It is now after 4:00 and we still have another two hours to Airlie Beach, our stop for the weekend. The silver lining in this is that now there are some roos coming out into fields for their evening graze and that always makes us feel better. We get to our lodging property minutes before their reception office closes at 6:00.

In Europe we claimed that we never saw an historic building that didn't have scaffolding in front of it. Our lodging property here is in a little cove off the Coral Sea and yes, it is under construction. Not the resort, the cove. We have a nice view of the water, boats at anchor, a lovely wooded point and about 80 acres of an open pit mine right in front of everything else. Apparently the local powers have decided that they needed to double their marina space and have undertaken this task by building a sea wall, digging out a low area in this cove and building the shoreline up around the outside. The result currently looks like the iron range pre-recovery. They have been at it for two years and it will be another two years until it is finished. Our check-in person said that it will really be nice when finished. We can hardly wait.

The good news (and there always is some) is that it is a brisk 5-minute walk into the center of town. Like Byron Bay, the joint is jumping and tourons of all ages are milling about. We stop at recommended "Fish D'Vine" and grab their last sidewalk table. Their fish is fresh and displayed in a glass counter where you place your order. Mary has a prawn on spicy linguine dish and John has sauteed Barramundi on bok choy with sweet potato chips. It sprinkles a bit while we eat but we are under cover, the food is good and we have finished the longest two day driving stretch of our whole trip. What's not to like?

The rain stops for us to walk around town for a half hour before heading back to bed.

Today's local headline: A Tangled Web The Australian (National Health Minister doctors a report on security issues at their facilities)