We showered, I flooded the bathroom, and departed from Airlie Beach for the last time. We collected water and petrol en route and it wasn't until we approached Prosperpine that to my horror I realised that the 285 kilometre journey to Noosa Heads was in fact in excess of 1,000 kilometres. When I booked the Noosa Heads accommodation from Townsville I clearly made an error in my distance calculations. I gingerly informed Ian of my mistake which went down very quietly while I struggled to hide my amusement. It was 10:30 when we left Airlie Beach and we had at least 10 hours driving ahead of us...
The journey was very uneventful. We stopped at Mackay for coffee and a snack and from there I took over the responsibility as driver to Rockhampton where we stopped for lunch. I retained my position as driver for another 300 or so kilometres to Gin Gin then I handed over to Ian to do the night driving. Somewhere on the way we passed a sign to Turkey Beach which made me think fondly of an episode of Family Fortunes, which was made famous by a particularly humorous chap whose answer to every question posed was 'turkey'. Ian spotted the grin that had appeared across my face and enquired as to its cause. During a facilities stop at 17:00 I made a telephone call to Noosa Heads YHA to inform them of our inevitably late arrival, with us still being 350 kilometres north it was unlikely that we would arrive prior to the reception closure at 20:00. I was a little unhappy to hear that they hadn't got a booking for me, nor had they any rooms for the night. Oh well. With little say in the matter I diverted my attention to finding us a bed for the night. With the mobile phone beeping in my ear informing me that the credit was about to expire, I secured us a bed at Maroochydore YHA and a late arrival was accepted. What a stroke of luck! I figured it would be a clever idea, and simple too, for the YHAs to award a successful caller booking a YHA bed or room with a booking reference number. I know that I booked the room at Noosa Heads YHA because I had trouble getting it and was delighted to secure it after several attempts over several days. What I don't know is whether or not I have given my credit card details to a dishonest person who told me that I had successfully booked a room for the night. Perhaps I was jsut unfortunate to speak to a trainee or something but I would prefer that to a fraudalent person who may now have my credit card details!
Our journey from Airlie Beach to Maroochydore covered a distance of 1,050 kilometres. We arrived at 22:00 but we didn't have any dinner. As we extinguished the bedroom light for night I pointed out to Ian the possibly deadly spider that had raced across the ceiling at quite a pace.
Copyright 2003 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.