Australia Nine - Airlie Beach Accommodation

Airlie Beach is known as the "Gateway to the Whitsundays" and is a small tourist town on the Queensland Coast. As well as having a beautiful beach with palm trees, Airlie also has a man-made lagoon which is great for swimming. It's a very laid back, surfer-ish town with many restaurants, cafes and backpacker hostels- but with a totally different vibe to Cairns. It felt a lot more chilled and there didn't seem to be nearly as much rowdiness in the evenings. 

We stayed at Airlie Apartments, which are located on top of a hill approximately 300m from the the main street. It was pretty quick to walk down to the town, a little slower climbing back up!

The apartments were spacious and well stocked with the basic equipment for cooking. We were even left some milk in the fridge to make a cup of tea/coffee (teabags/coffee provided) when we arrived! We had a comfy lounge with TV and DVD player, and other facilities included microwave, toaster, hair drier and iPod dock (although this didn't work in our first apartment). It was a really nice place to stay and Cathy, the owner, was really helpful. We actually stayed in two different apartments whilst there, as we went on a sailing trip for 3 days in the middle and then came back to Airlie Beach for another couple of nights.

Cathy let us leave our larger bags in the reception, and gave us a lift down to Abel Point Marina at the end of our stay to catch the ferry to Hamilton Island. The marina is easy to walk to, but a bit of a struggle with lots of luggage! She also booked us onto the kayaking trip that we took, and has leaflets for many other tours in the reception.

It was a nice change to stay in an apartment with more space and freedom to do our own thing after the B&B in Cairns (we enjoyed both, just liked the different experiences). We cooked dinner in the apartment on a few nights, and enjoyed sitting outside on our little deck and down by the pool. 

And it was a beautiful view from the top of the hill...