We spent almost a week in Airlie Beach, and I loved every minute of it. It was so beautiful there, it was kind of like a dream.
It actually really felt like a dream because to get to Airlie Beach, you have to drive down this quiet highway through small farming communities, it actually really reminded me of the small towns in Saskatchewan where I grew up.
But then you take two rights, and drive 20 minutes past a field full of kangaroos, and emerge on a beautiful white sand beach and turquoise sea.
We stayed at the Magnum’s Backpackers, and it was great. Magnum’s is right in the middle of town, so it’s really easy to walk everywhere, and it’s right beside the Woolworth’s, and it has a nice big kitchen, so we were able to save a lot of money by cooking almost all of our meals, rather than eating out.
Also, they have live music almost every evening, and falling asleep to acoustic guitar music every night was lovely.
We also did the Airlie Beach Pub Crawl one night, and it was actually really fun. We met a group of Aussies from Brisbane who were in Airlie on vacation, and a girl from Texas who was WOOFing in Australia on a chicken farm, and had a great time with all of them.
Airlie Beach has a huge park along the water with a gigantic, free swimming pool for everyone to enjoy, and it has a walking/biking path that stretches 5 KM along the ocean. We rented bikes one day and cruised the boardwalk.
We also found a hike that would take us up to the top of the hills to see the view of the Whitsundays, but we only made it about ten minutes in before we saw a snake on the path, and then we spun around and ran as fast as we could back the other way.
Airlie Beach is a pretty small town, and it doesn’t have a lot of diving, so even though our original plan was to stay there and try to find jobs, we decided pretty quickly we wouldn’t be able to stay there long term, but our time there was amazing, and I would absolutely recommend it to anybody who is traveling through Australia.
loveliness. 