The Whitsundays

Next stop after Brisbane was The Whitsundays. To get here we had a 20 hour (!) train journey which arrived at Airlie Beach at 4.30am. This caused a small problem as we couldn't check into our accommodation until 7.00 but we managed to amuse ourselves by chilling out on a picnic bench by the sea and eating breakfast while the sun rose...

We spent the rest of the day dodging rain showers in a very tropical feeling Airlie Beach but it wasn't too bad and we managed to find a nice Sushi restaurant for lunch so we were quite content :-)
The next day we headed off to Denman Island, an extremely small member of the Whitsunday Islands with just space for a Claire and Matt to camp on. Was pretty cool having an island all to ourselves even though we had to put up our tent whilst fending off attacks from huge green ants and the dreaded sandflies. We did a bit of snorkeling off our private beach and saw some zebra fish and a few others as well as lots of sea anemones. Was v v v good fun!