Wow, to wake up to the sound of rain on the roof – can you imagine how that feels? Well it rained steady all night and really hard. We are dry in the camper van but a bit stuffy. We have bought a small fan that we set up to blow on us and that helps a lot just to move the air around. We are really in the tropics and with the amount of rain around the humidity is really high.
We got up and decided after a quick breakfast to break camp and head out toward Airlies Beach rather than linger around here. The rain chased us onward.
We headed out and followed Karen’s direction as before. This time the flood zone areas were more of a concern as we quickly found water running across many places on the backroads. Wes was driving and this really was new ground for him. However he did a great job of facing each ‘river crossing’ with determination and a heavy foot. We get to one of these and he would slow down and ask me if it was too deep – which at 6-8 inches it was not but definitely to be treated with respect. We crossed several and without incident but Wes learned about holding the steering wheel tight and driving through at the right speed… not fast and not slow.
We congratulated ourselves on this new experience as we finally got onto the Bruce Highway which is the main highway along this coast. The rain is still pounding down but we feel the biggest challenge is over… NOT!!!
We came around a corner to meet a semi truck followed by several cars. The road is not flooded but has lots of puddles on it and as we meet the truck our car is TOTALLY swamped with water. We could not even see the wiper blades through the water cascading over us. Wes did not panic he just took his foot off the gas and hung onto the steering wheel hoping we would still be on the road when everything cleared. We were.
Then we get to play dodge the potholes at highway speed in full rain. Got to love that game!
Finally we noticed that cars are stopped ahead and we find ourselves looking at a river (not a stream) but a river flowing over the highway. There are crews out there stopping the vehicles and allowing caravans of vehicles to cross in one direction at a time. I am not sure of the depth of the flooding water but suspect it was about 10-12 inches. The lead vehicle, pulled out of the line up of waiting vehicles, was always a large truck to ‘break the water movement’ and the rest of the cars were instructed to follow as close as possible to take advantage of the ‘tracks’ in the water. No problem on this either and I suspect over here this is a regular event.
Shortly after this the rain started to ease off and then slowly during the next couple of hours of driving it stopped completely. We arrived at Airlie Beach to broken clouds and high humidity. As we went to check in we immediately found we had to make some decisions about what we are going to do here at Whitsundays Islands. This makes a difference on the costs for camping. If we stay 3 nights, we pay for 2 and get one free. If we book a overnight cruise then we don’t pay for the night we are gone and we can have one night free as well. It got very complicated but they had a couple of people selling the cruises etc. in the office so we went over and looked at our options.
We decided to do an island cruise tomorrow that is an all day event. So we will definitely stay two nights here but decided against an overnight cruise. It is very costly and we are not sure the weather will be any good. When we talked about it more we learned that the 3rd night would be free if we signed up so we decided why not. Even if we decide to pull out after 2 nights we still are not out any money. We will see how tomorrow goes and then maybe decide to do something else on the next day.
At the park beside the camp kitchen we discovered a tour bus parked. It is really an unusual bus with bunk beds (3 high) at the back of the bus. This one has a tour group from Germany and it is a 30 day 11000 km trip around eastern Australia. As one guy said, we do whistle stops in the cities but at least I don’t have to drive.
As we parked the bus we discovered that the Cockatoos are numerous here and not afraid as they walked around the camper checking us out. Remember, they bite so do not put your finger in their face – so I have been warned and believe to be true.
It is still not raining and we are hoping tomorrow will be a dry day. Clouds will be fine since the air temperature is really comfortable (ok a bit warm).
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