Or a Cyclone, as they call it here. (aside: Astrid tells me she titled this blog entry to match the quote from The Wizard of Oz). Its called Hamish and it started in Northern Queensland a week or so back and is moving down the coast. The last big Cyclone was known as Larry and was back in 2004 -- he was pretty devastating. They say Hamish is stronger -- in fact, Hamish is the strongest they've seen since 1974.
We were arriving into Rainbow Beach on Saturday March 7th when we first heard about Hamish. We were due to head out onto Fraser Island the next day for a 3 day / 2 night safari which my friend Katrina said was the highlight of her trip. At the prep talk (where they show you a few short videos about the island which are super boring) we were told Hamish was coming south and the island may be closed tomorrow, but we wouldn't know until the morning. So we got to know our group of 10 who'd be sharing the 4x4 and went ahead on the shopping trip to buy the necessary group provisions (which included an awesome 10 kg watermelon! :)).
The next day we were told the bad news that Fraser was closed by the government as a precaution. The next 2 days the island remained closed and we had to cut our losses and make alternate arrangements... opting instead to head up to Airlie Beach (home of the Whitsunday islands and our upcoming sailing trip) a couple of days early.
Rainbow Beach itself is a super small beach town with a 200 m main road with several shops, food places, and a hotel. There's 3 hostels all located directly next to each other (off the main strip) with the bus stop located across the street. Overall the town is pretty tiny with not a whole lot to do -- it primarily exists to service the Fraser Island tourist industry, which consists mostly of backpackers such as ourselves (well, in our case we are more pretending to be backpackers, albeit 10 years their senior :)). Spending 3 days at the hostel was a little boring but we made the most of it by hanging out with the members of our would-be safari group.
When we knew we wouldn't be able to get to Fraser even by trying to wait the storm out for a couple of days, we decided to crack into the plethora of food we had purchased and have a big BBQ lunch/dinner. We made burgers from scratch (though we forgot the breadcrumbs) which turned out to be super tasty. That night we invited our group up to our room (which was actually quite large with a big private balcony) to play cards and drink goon -- isn't that what all backpackers do? :) The next morn we had a big fry up breakfast.
One day we did get some pretty heavy rain, but I have to admit I was a little disappointed that Rainbow Beach ended up missing most of the storm since Hamish decided to hang out at sea moving south, rather than heading inland. I was hoping to experience the crazy wind/rain you see on the news when hurricane hit. You know, with chairs flying around behind the reporter, and trees half bent from the gusts. But alas, at least we were safe and sound with no real threat from nature.
We're in Airlie Beach now (Thursday March 12), and are sure glad we decided to spend a few excess days here rather than sticking around Rainbow another couple of nights like the others did. This town is actually a real town with lots going on (albeit catered heavily around the fact everyone is here to go sailing).
We're off sailing on Saturday and are quite excited. We originally wanted to head sailing for Astrid's bday, but the timing didn't work (ironic, since now with Fraser cancelled, we could have went sailing on her bday). But instead we're going to head on an JetSki Eco-Safari all day tomorrow for her bday, which should be great.
And technically, tomorrow morning in Oz is still March 12th in Canada ;) Happy B-day honey!
Syd.
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