After a fun Christmas and New Year with ex pats, all together on the beach complete with decorated “sandmen”, I took my next visitor to see the highlights up the east coast. We started at Hervey Bay, where unfortunately a cyclone had just passed by so Fraser Island was closed to self drive visitors (what we had planned to do) so we quickly rebooked on to a tour with cool dingos. Christian was disappointed because he had wanted the chance to drive on the sand, but I was secretly really pleased because I had already experienced the self drive version and although I’d enjoyed it, didn’t really fancy repeating it and having to compromise with a bunch of strangers on what to do/see/eat etc.
The cool dingo option was a good one, the crowd were late twenties and upwards-better company than the 18 yr old gap year students, and we could sit back, see more and hear a bit more detail about what we were seeing. Even though we didn’t get much sleep in the hostel, because of a very loud snorer in our room, it was more comfortable than camping. We went to some spots I hadn’t seen last time, like rainbow beach, and took a helicopter ride over the island.

Further north we stopped at 1770, a very cute laid back town with a nice beach. Lazed in hammocks and felt like I could have spent much longer there. The hiring of surfboards was the cheapest on the east coast and everyone I met was so friendly and chilled out.
After a loooong night journey up to Airlie beach (the greyhound bus broke down and so we waited in a bus stop for 3 hours in the middle of the night for a replacement!) we got straight on to a boat for a three day two night sailing trip.
This was fab, just the right length of time to explore the whitsundays, enjoying the beaches, sailing and trying out scuba diving-which was pretty incredible.