nov 3 - airlie beach, 7am, hot

A major day- after an unbelievable 6 weeks on the road- i have finally worked out how to use our blog... so much for forward planning whilst we were at home!
I think rather than try and catch up in 1 go- boring for you to read and equally mind numbing for me to write, i’ll do it in bite size pieces.
Right now we are back at airlie beach- if you are looking at a map, it south of Townsville, north of mackay and the closest part of mainland aus to the Whitsunday islands.
This is the 8th day we been here now so i guess you could say we have got a bit stuck but you know, it’s the closest place to perfect that lu or i have been to, maddie and Georgia love it also and the camp pool has a slide, so Bugs gives it a big vote also. I reckon however we’ll move on by mid-week.
We just got back from a weekend away from the van – 2 weeks in a room no larger than our kitchen at home so i think we were due it. An 8am ferry on Saturday, followed by a 5pm ferry back on Sunday with a night at the daydream island resort squeezed in the middle. Great beach, great pool, couple cool margerita’s and starched bed linen. Downsides- hotel aircon played havoc with my sinuses and lu’s uncontrollable shopping tendency, but we can get over both of them!
My suspicions about our camper’s reliability are also increasing, fuelled by a flat battery when we got back to the ferry carpark. Aussie racq were very quick but that due almost entirely to being 2 miles from a population centre. An outback road may not yield the same response. This on top of geo locking us out of the van on Friday (the day saved by Bugs the cat burglar....) and a couple of other minor issues.
I spoke to the higher company about it- very understanding and i suspect when we get to Brisbane (about 1250km) we may be in for a change.
one of our overriding impressions of this trip has been how unbelievably ‘nice’ everyone seems to be- without it being in that vile American over serviced way: From the guy at immigration when we first got to Sydney; any number of shopkeepers we talked to; general tourist info people; the breakdown guy last night, but also people at the camp kitchens we been using or just parents of kids maddie, geo and bugs have befriended , these are a really friendly bunch. No doubt some drunken as....e will try to spoil that view but he can wait. There was also the weird town of Ingham- home to Australia’s largest Capsicum festival (how many are there?!)- which had a bit of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre feel about it, but we didn’t stop there too long so it doesn’t really count.
I attached some pics- mainly from our day trip to Whitsunday island and the jaw dropping Whitehaven beach we visited last week. The girls are all growing really fast- (i am even noticing it- could be the sun). Look out for bug’s new teeth, maddies new hair cut – could you fail to spot it- and lu’s new ‘120 a day’ sit up stomach!
Take care, keep in touch.