Airlie Beach

So starts the “miles and miles of gorgeous beach” portion of our roadtrip. After leaving Lucinda, we stopped in Townsville, about an hour south.

Then we continued our drive south – lots of pretty coastline, tiny towns, and cool bridges.

Airlie Beach

First things first, Vince loves to feed animals. When we arrived at our holiday park, the first thing we did was check out their “Daily bird feeding” at 4:00. In this case, the well-fed birds are rainbow lorikeets.

Airlie Beach (in the Whitsunday area) is stunning coastline with lots of green:

We went on a hike one day - it was green and lush, with a completely empty beach at the end of it.

Here’s the thing about empty white beaches in the northern part of Australia: You shouldn’t go on them because there are giant 30-foot crocodiles around. Our friend told us NOT to be the news-making stupid American tourists who ignore the signs and die a gruesome death… So we didn’t ignore the signs and went on our way.

(Loosely translated, this Australian sign means "Stay behind the railing at that look-out. Look, it's just over there on your right. These crocs are big, hungry, and not messing around. Have a nice day." Ok, I made the nice day part up.)