Keeping up with Beth

Here begins the real curveball of my trip.

I arrive back in rainbow beach, in the beautiful beautiful sun around 3:30 absolutely shattered from such a long day- or rather the early morning, and feeling exhausted from travelling quite a bit and trying to enjoy so much of the time I had.

Skipping to Friday, and the weather began to fall short of the sunny warm weather everyone expects of Australian summer. I decided to try wait it out before I head down to the beach for a sunny day on the waters edge. Whilst I’m waiting to be able to start day, I decide I ought to go shopping so I can eat and not spend too much money on eating out as I had done about twice already.

It still raining which is boring so I try wait it out. I start chatting to another girl in my room who is also trying to wait out the rain before heading to the beach.

Other people begin filtering into our room and we all just start chatting, getting to know each other as you have to when travelling and decided if the weather decided to pick up we could go down to the pool and have a swim rather than the beach, in case the weather decided to randomly flip on us. Eventually it picked up and we managed to just float around in absolute heaven for about an hour.

My time in rainbow beach was spent fairly lazily as the weather went downhill. I was lucky to have people to talk to and get to know, and also to find out they were heading the same direction as me so I would be able to see them up in my next destination- which was definitely a lifesaver.

I left rainbow beach for another overnight drive up to Airlie Beach. It was super long, but we arrived the next morning.

Airlie didn’t have too many stories other than my horror of being stuck there. I was there for a week. I was meant to be in the hostel 2 nights to start with and have a Whitsundays break in between and a final night in the hostel. That however wasn’t how the plan went. I had heard the weather was getting bad up north and that people were being sent back down, coaches were being stopped as the roads were blocked. I thought I could probably get away with it. However as I arrived, I had one night of downtime, then was moved rooms after the room leaked pretty badly, into a different all girls room. That day I was also was told my Whitsunday trip had been cancelled, and the SKydive I had woken up for at 4:30am (I actually did wake up, get out of bed and was ready to go surprisingly) was also cancelled after 6 hours of them messaging to wait for the weather to pick up- I knew it wouldn’t. I decided I could have one lazy day, if it wasn’t going to pick up at all, so used to time to go shopping for food, watch some Netflix and call up the tour company and see what I could do about my cancelled trip. Mum doesn’t know this I don’t think, at least she didn’t at the time (She feared enough from the first time I told her I was skydiving) I tried rebooking my skydive for a couple of days later, since I didn’t have anything else planned, and had the time in Airlie it made sense. However the rain was pretty much continuous for the whole week I was there.

I spent the week in thought, and trying to get some creativity flowing, reading some books. Generally I tried to be more productive than sitting in bed on my phone doing nothing useful, but my phone usage did go up a bit too much for my liking… It was a shock that I could spend so long looking at a little screen. It has since then, been my mission to try and find other entertainment for example exploring and reading or just generally not wasting time on Netflix and instagram. I have partially succeeded but it is still my mission to get my usage time down to a minimum!

I thought I had finally reached my last day in the town of nothing, as I called the coach company the night before I left to check they were running and they sounded pretty positive in that.

I called again the next morning as they advised, all packed, dressed, taxi booked and ready to take the adventure to magnetic island, only to be told since the flooding had been so bad that night, the roads had been reblocked and they couldn’t get through to Townsville.

This was day one of 3 I believe.

I made a decision in my mine, if I couldn’t get out the next day, I would most likely be better cutting my losses and heading down towards Brisbane, maybe stopping along the way.

The next day I tried again, with no luck of movement, but I was to call that evening and check about Saturday. I called my company to see if they had any suggestions, if there was anything I could do any earlier or not really, The answer was in fact, not really.

So I called for the final time that Friday evening. They informed me that the roads were still inaccessible and there was no way they were moving on the Saturday and almost definitely not the Sunday. My last day of the tour was Monday, and at 8am that day I had a scuba dive. After that I was only going to head myself back down to Brisbane. So I called up my mother as I seem to in every crisis, and told her my plan, and asked for her input on the best options.

I had had a week of nothing. i was bored out of my mind and at this point there would have been no point going up north as it would just be clearing up and I’m not too sure I could have enjoyed it as much as I wanted to.

My decision was to head down to Brisbane, where I was told the sun was, and I knew my friend was down there either way. My flight to PNG left from Brisbane too, so I had to be down there by the 20th. All I was going to do from cairns was hire a car with my credit from the refunds I had gotten, and maybe stop off a few places such as Noosa and Hervey Bay. It made more sense just to cut it all off and have a couple of weeks nearly down in Brisbane, and enjoy the city rather than the small beach towns.

So I am still rather pale much to my disappointment.

My choices to travel downwards were coach or to fly from the small airport called Proserpine that was half an hour away from my hostel.

After a quick price comparison, I figured the price difference really wasn’t that different minus the luggage, but even that I figured I could just about get away with.

After a conversation with my mum, she assured me it was okay to spend the money on a 2 hour flight and take the easy route down, rather than be stuck on another long coach journey, except it would have been 20 hours in one go, or extra cost on a hostel. I figured the flight did make more sense, I just wanted to leave.

8pm that night, on Expedia I booked the flight and packed up my stuff as quick as I could so excited to know I was actually escaping Airlie Beach, with a flight at 1pm the next day! It might not sound like too much, but I had been driving myself insane, being in the same room (luckily I didn’t have to keep switching) for almost a week, with all of my planned activities being cancelled and not much opportunity to make the most of the place with the weather.

But I could get away, down to Brisbane where even if it was rainy I was sure I would be able to do so much. It was all rather last minute, but I wouldn’t be Beth if I hadn’t left it til then, lets be honest.

I didn’t even have the bus transfer until about 9:30 the next morning, with the bus leaving at 10:50! But it didn’t matter. I grabbed my bags, waited outside the hostel for the bus and when it arrived handed my stuff over to go underneath, got jealous of the fact the sun was finally returning to the north, and got on the bus.

I arrived in Brisbane which means the end of what I managed to do of my tour, on the Saturday afternoon. I was so grateful to see some sun, and not a rain cloud in sight. I was very happy and so relieved.

Next story… Brisbane!