Page 32: Back to Townsville
Townsville
In Townsville the Air Force gave us a noisy, sunset
welcome with a fly-past of Hornets passing
low over the Caravan Park. It was, of course, mere coincidence that the
airport was next door.
Returning to Townsville
was quite a shock, it was so noisy! The caravan park was close to a main
road, a railway and the airport which is both military and commercial.
The noise started at five o'clock in the morning with the departure of
the first commercial jet. It continued with huge diesel trucks using compression
braking to stop at the traffic lights outside the park. When the lights
turned green there'd be the scream of tortured rubber from hoons desperate
to get to the next lights first. On the railway, heavy freight trains
roared past, sounding their sirens as they approached each level crossing.
The cacophony climaxed at 9:30 a.m. when the Air Force's squadron of F/A-18
Hornet fighters took off with afterburners blasting every other sound
into insignificance. The caravan trembled. The world trembled.
At eleven o'clock at night, just when we thought it was all over and we
could get some sleep, they started testing a Caribou's engines. Half an
hour later a military helicopter bellowed low overhead for the umpteenth
time.
The moral of this story is that we should read our own website! After
staying in this caravan park last year we wrote: Another
incentive to move on was the location of the caravan park that we'd chosen.
It was very close to the airport, a railway and a busy main road - a lot
of noise.
Hey, We're Famous!
We
had received a tip-off - thank you, Sue - that we should check out page
93 of the October 2006 edition of Caravan World. There we found
a photograph of ourselves riding a camel in Denham at the end of July,
2004. The camel was called Madison and she was a beautiful, gentle beast.
We have no idea who took the photograph.
This is Madison. Isn't she lovely?
Her owners, Sandra and Henk, don't believe in controlling the camels by
pain as is the normal way.
They are trained by kindness and it shows.
No drool or slobber from this camel's mouth.
No nasty temper, either.
Now we've become famous we are looking for ways to cash in on our celebrity
status. We tried one or two Townsville restaurants and offered to sponsor
their establishments in return for free meals. You know the sort of thing,
" . . . as seen in Caravan World". Strangely enough,
they didn't seem as enthusiastic as we'd expected. And after all we've
done for the Australian wine industry. Oh well, bugger it, we'd only have
put on weight anyway. More weight, that is.
Airlie Beach
We decided a week in Townsville was enough and moved further south to
a beach resort that we'd heard a great deal about.
Airlie Beach is part of the Whitsunday Region. The name originated from
good old Captain James Cook who discovered the Whitsunday Passage on Whit
Sunday, 3rd June, 1770. Ships using the passage sailed close inshore,
passing between a large group of islands and the mainland, avoiding the
necessity of sailing outside the treacherous Great Barrier Reef. By doing
so they saved much time. The group of islands is also known - wrongly
- as the Whitsunday Islands.
Captain Cook named the group of islands the Cumberland Isles. However,
the name Whitsunday caught people's imagination and the islands are today
known as the Whitsunday Islands - you even see them named as such on maps.
Officially, however, they are still the Cumberland Isles as the name has
never been changed. Of the seventy four islands in the group, only eight
are inhabited.
Since the name Whitsunday is so widely used in the region, I looked it
up. For the benefit of those, like me, who didn't pay attention in Sunday
school, Whit Sunday falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter and was originally
known as White Sunday because of the baptismal robes worn on that
day. The Holy Ghost is said to have descended upon the apostles as they
celebrated the Jewish festival of Pentecost, a harvest festival observed
on the fiftieth day after the second day of Passover. According to the
book of Exodus, Passover is so named because one dark night the good Lord
sent his heavy mob to murder all the Egyptian first-born kids, but to
leave all the Hebrew kids alone. Hence the Hebrew kids were passed
over, get it?
Why bump off all those Egyptian kids? Well, a Mr Pharaoh, who was running
Egypt at that time, kept promising the Lord that he'd let the Hebrews
go but, being a politician, his promises meant nothing. In the end God
threw a serious tantrum and topped all the Egyptian first-born kids to
show Pharaoh who was boss. Personally, I think that was a tad extreme,
don't you? Being a first-born myself I tend to take exception to it. Why
not just bump off this Pharaoh bloke who was causing all the grief?
This story reminds me a bit of a bloke called George who also went over
the top. George didn't like a joker called Saddam so he bombed thousands
of Iraqis but Saddam escaped without a scratch 'cos he's a mite smarter
than George. However, George's lads eventually found Saddam hiding in
a hole in the desert. They gave him a bath, trimmed his hair and beard,
gave him medical treatment, a nice cell to live in and fed him three square
meals a day. Meanwhile the surviving Iraqis are living in a war-torn hell
of George's making. Funny old world, isn't it?
I'm beginning to wish I'd never started this. What has it all to do with
Airlie Beach anyway?
So, to conclude, Airlie Beach was named in 1930 by the chairman of a local
council after his home town, Airlie, in Scotland.
A couple of views of Airlie Beach
We
found Airlie to be a beautiful spot but over-commercialised. The place
was packed but the people in the street, on the beaches and in the parks
were not as friendly as we're used to. The locals, however, were fine.
After a day or two of hearing snatches of conversation, we realised that
most of the tourists were from Europe. We've
come across this phenomenon before with Europeans. By comparison, Aussies
must be the friendliest and most relaxed people on earth. (Other
tourists spoke a corrupt form of English; these were known as "Americans".)
Airlie has avoided any high-rise development so far but a hill overlooking
the town is crammed with houses so close together that they're almost
touching, and even more are being constructed. A shopkeeper told us that
building on that rise had not been allowed for many years but . . . money
talks. Now the people building there are destroying the very thing that
had attracted them - and everyone else - to Airlie in the first place.
Looking up. Progress or environmental vandalism?
Looking down. Airlie Beach from above the
construction.
Bowen
One day we set off to visit a location called Dingo Beach but we never
got there. Don't ask, it's a long story. We ended up in a coastal town
called Bowen which had a great lookout point on a rise known as Flagstaff
Hill. From the top we had 360° views back over Bowen, along the coastline
in each direction and out over the northern end of the Whitsunday Islands.
Even better, there was a café there which afforded panoramic views
while we sampled their coffee.
The café (with the sloping windows) on Flagstaff
Hill. We ate our picnic lunch in the
gazebo then went to the café for a coffee afterwards. Nothing like
a bit of cheek.
We couldn't swear to it, but neither of us noticed a flagstaff on Flagstaff Hill. The views were spectacular, though. I was going to reproduce one of the many pictures I took of the islands but all they consist of is a light blue sky, a dark blue sea, a straight horizon separating them and some grey lumps that are the distant islands. Pretty boring. So instead I'll show you the view up the beach to the north.
Cape Edgecumbe from Flagstaff Hill. What looks like
an old castle on the hill isn't.
A closer inspection revealed it was a pile of boulders (inset). Look at
that top one.
It's true we didn't inspect the large boulder on the
top closely, but I'm not sure that I'd be sleeping too well on wet stormy
nights if I lived in one of those houses directly below it. This is
a region prone to cyclones.
Over the far side of Cape Edgecumbe is a lovely little cove called Horseshoe
Bay which we visited after leaving the lookout. And, no, we didn't see
any horseshoes in the bay but it was horseshoe shaped. Once again
the photos were disappointing but there was a couple of energetic young
blokes on the beach doing backflips and other totally impossible gymnastics.
Pam was itching to show him how it was done properly
but I had to restrain her.
When I managed to drag Pam away we drove into town to look at some murals painted onto the side of buildings. There were twenty four in total and all were extremely good. This was my favourite:
This looks just like an image on paper stuck to
the wall with tape, doesn't it?
Pam stood next to the mural to give it scale.
The picture, its border and even the shadow where the
picture appears to curl, were painted directly on to the wall.
Check the sharp shadow of the picture then notice that Pam has no shadow.
The whole image was totally flat though it's hard to believe. I think
that's really clever, don't you?
Shute Harbour
The road that ran past the Airlie Cove Caravan Park continued for a few
kilometres to the sheltered inlet of Shute Harbour. We thought we'd find
a nice coffee shop there but we were wrong. This little place was all
about boats, boats and more boats. The large car park was totally full
and the verge of the approach road was lined with cars coupled to empty
boat trailers. Since there were not many people around, it seemed reasonable
to assume they were all out in their boats. There were many moored craft
in the inlet which is protected from the open sea by some of the Whitsunday
Islands, and beyond them, by the Great Barrier Reef.
We're not boating or fishing people and as there was nowhere to park,
we explored a nearby side road which led up a steep hill. Guess what we
found at the top? Yep, a lovely café with stunning views out over
the inlet.
What would you give to look out of your window and
see this view?
To the right were a couple of jetties but a tall
palm tree blocked the view.
By the time we left Airlie Beach we had accumulated fourteen
rented campervans around our caravan. From each one within earshot we
could hear German being spoken. Opposite us, however, was a small tent
occupied by a middle aged Welsh couple. Taffy sat outside all day in just
a pair of shorts. He bellowed, "Hello Gorgeous" (or similar)
to every presentable female that passed. This saved me the trouble of
scanning the windows all the time, I could wait for his shout. He was
tanned to a mahogany shade. There's a lot of truth in the words of the
song about mad dogs and Englishmen staying out in the mid-day sun. Or
Welshmen, in this case.
So it's goodbye to Airlie Beach and goodbye to Page 32.