After Magnetic we continued south towards Brisbane. Scottie wanted to stop off at Airlie Beach to see his friend Cal. And Alex was all for it because he had never been there before. It wasn’t ideal for me because I had been to Airlie on the way up to Cairns. But when you’re the only person without his own car you can’t influence the plan all that much.
Honestly, nothing really happened while we were in Airlie. Unless you’re going to the Whitsunday Islands there isn’t too much to see. Perhaps you can do a few hikes but we mostly just chilled. So between Magnetic Island and Airlie Beach, we were just hanging for the most part. I’m not complaining but looking back on it I think we could have made better use of our time and explored a bit more.
The good thing was that we were able to stay at Cal’s apartment. He’s a super nice guy actually. We met on the boat trip (he works on the boats that do the tours) and we really hit it off. They had a couple of extra beds that they let us use.
The only noteworthy thing we did was drink. I’ll admit that Airlie is a cool spot for nightlife. It is small but you can have a really fun night out there if you want to.
I ended up running into another friend of mine from Byron while we were out in town. Looking back on it, I’ve run into a lot of people from Byron Bay in random places throughout Australia. This time it was my Argentinian friend, Salva.
He was working on one of the boats and getting a Master Diver license at the same time. it sounded like a pretty amazing gig, to be honest. He is making money and diving in one of the best spots in the world for that sort of thing. And all for free basically.
I was happy to get out Airlie once we were on the road again. I wasn’t really in the party mood at that point in time. I wanted to see some new things and get back to Brisbane so I could figure out what my next adventure was going to look like.
We started camping again once we left Airlie. The first spot was extremely nice but I can’t remember the name of it right now for the life of me. It was right on the water’s edge and I met an Aussie guy there who was surprisingly really amped-up about Donald Trump and the election. It’s always fun to see what Aussies think of American politics. Everyone has an opinion here.
But the night there was a bit scary. We were on the cape with basically no cover so the wind was extremely strong. I woke up in the middle of the night and it seemed like there was a hurricane going on outside. I thought I was going to blow away in my tent. Even Alex said he was frightened. He has a rooftop tent and he thought he was going to get blown off of his car.
The next day we went out to this place called Stanage. This really small fishing town way off the main road. Honestly I didn’t really care for it because I wanted to get to Rockhampton to meet a friend. But one of the guys we met the night before said it was a great little place to camp. So we took the drive.
The drive itself was good fun. Off the beaten track sort of thing. A dirt road through a bunch of cattle ranches. The town itself was, well, as small as the guy said it was going to be. We did find the campsite with no issue. It was free and nestled up along the tree line close to the beach.
I explored a bit of the coast along where the campsite was but there wasn’t all that much to see. The most interesting thing I found was a washed up boat that seemed to be turned into a house of some sort. It would have been a great place to fish but we didn’t have any rods.
I was happy because I was able to sleep on the beach and look at the stars through the opening in my tent. It’d been a while since I was able to do that. Can’t get away with that in north Queensland because of the crocodiles. Facing east, I was able to wake up to the sunrise as well.