Being back on the road did feel a little unusual again after being stationary at The Brook for the past month.  The sensation of being so free and roaming Australia was far from being dull.  We were excited for the next week to come as Nay’s family had decided to come up for a break in Melbourne’s winter to see us!!  Allowing ourselves three days to travel to Airlie, we made the most of a full sunny day and pulled the cow hide out (officially named “Brook”) to allow her to dry out.  It was a great opportunity to catch up on ourselves and prepare for wild week with the Johnsies!  Unknown to us, the day we had decided to burn across to Airlie came with a great thunder storm. The rain pelted down for a solid 24 hours just to make the trip interesting and created flash flooding in some areas.  We did however, still manage to stumble past the “Big Mango”. The beautiful Airlie everyone had talked about didn’t quite look the same, with ferocious looking clouds casting a dark and gloomy shadow over the town.

Needless to say, waking up the next day, there was not a cloud in sight and blue skies welcomed the arrival of Dave, Maj, Tez, Charls, Livs AND Mark’s bday!!!  As Gobs was busy at work he joined in on the shenanigans halfway through the week.  The day was full of celebrations – beginning with breakfast, we went out for the first time on the trip to The Fat Frog.  Then followed a lazy day on the beach until we made our way to the Big 4 Caravan Park to meet up with the others.  We continued the celebrations late into the night with espresso martinis!

This entire week at Airlie Beach with the Johnsies seemed to fly by in a blink of an eye!  We had many activities to keep us all busy including copious amounts of swimming, smashing each other at tennis and seeing who can get the most hole in ones at mini golf!  We’d spent some time at the lagoon in town and went for a stroll and stumbled across a sand sculpture which was very creative.  There was also many a froffies and great discussions had on the deck.  We had made the most of being in the one spot for a long period of time and let the hide out to dry on the roof of the condo (the process continues!).

As quick as the excitement hit us for their arrival, we were finding ourselves a week later saying goodbye to our visitors after having such an amazing week.  Finding ourselves back on the road seemed a little from the norm.  From being at the station, then a week at Airlie we were now back on the road with no idea where were to stay that night.  After a little research we found ourselves beside the croc inhabited Constant Creek, a little south of Airlie, which we were more than happy to be sleeping in the roof top tent!  After this quick stay over we found ourselves in a magical little oasis by the name of Notch Point.  It’s salty ocean waters also made home for crocs but the breathtaking views were well worth not being able to swim.

We had decided to bunk a couple of nights along the foreshore to muster up a plan of attack in what we were going to do over the next few weeks.  The world was our oyster once again and the freeways down south looked welcoming…