Airlie Beach

We arrived in Airle Beach mid Saturday morning and could not believe how much the town had grown. I had been here 20 odd years ago as a backpacker. Now it’s a thriving tourist town with all the usual shops, BCF, SuperCheap & two Woolworths. We had a brief drive around town marvelling at all the tourists and tourist shops. We made some calls to find a home and settled into the Flametree caravan park. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the Airport was directly next to the park, and being a Saturday a myriad of plans were taking off, skydivers skimming down to land (almost on the roof of the camper) Ah the “serenity”. We settled in quickly then took a walk to the airport to chase our dream of a flight out over the islands and reef. We had been told that a helicopter flight would be well out of reach so we checked out the seaplane first, it looked good deal.  As we pondered, we headed up to the Airlie Beach Heli Taxi where we met Karen and Ron – the owners of the company, made us feel very welcome and offered us a great deal for a 20min flight. After comparing the prices and feeling it was our dream to have a helicopter flight we walked out knowing what to do. We confirmed the flight for the following day at 2:30. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the main area and surrounding parklands – yep we are still on holidays… Flametree Caravan pk also offered unlimited WiFi so we were going to cash in. We caught up on some blogging and managed to read through the Bucknell’s last few blog entries, something we had wanted to do for ages. 

some sand modelling we found on the beach...

Sunday morning arrived quickly and yep Father’s Day – Pancakes for breakfast! Off to a good start. Around 9am the phone rang, our helicopter flight had been moved forward to 11:30 due to a wedding party needing a ride to Whitehaven beach (apparently the wind was up and the seaplane could not land – bit of a problem really) we were happy to bring the flight forward.  As we were about to leave Larina decided to have a wardrobe change, ok let’s go, but then the tears came… Come on Larina we will miss our flight… “I’m not going” was the cry… May Day, May Day….we have a child who is crashing… Mandy begged the question – What’s wrong? “I might fall out” was the reply. Ok problem identified now we need to resolve. A shoulder-ride to the airport was the start, then some reassuring talk about seatbelts and closed doors. This did the trick and we were on our way. Safety talk done and over to the Chopper. Ron, Karen and our pilot Paul were fantastic before long we were flying off over the waters of the Great Barrier Reef past North & South Mole Island, Daydream and around the waters of Airlie Beach. All too soon we were back at the airport all with smiles from ear to ear. This will go down as one of the highlights of the trip.  Thanks again to all the team at Heli Taxi’s Airlie Beach. What a fantastic treat.