Check out time was 10am so we had our breakfast and packed again, our flight left at 4:15pm and the train to the airport took 20min so it would be a long day either sitting at the airport or walking around with our packs on. Paul asked the hostel if we could leave our packs with them and pick them up around1pm, to our surprise they would keep our packs and we could use all the facilities until 6pm that night! Perfect, it was the best weather we had in Brisbane, the sky was blue with no rain clouds in sight and the air was very hot and humid so we decided to lay out by the hostel pool. The pool was not crowded and with the sun so intense Paul loved jumping in to cool off, while I soaked it up and read my book. When it got close to our departure time we took a shower, ate some lunch and walked 5min to the train station. When we walked up the steps to the station I was already drenched with sweat when a lady asked if we were going to the airport, we said yes, then she started saying something about a friend of hers that either she could not find or was going there then she said "look I'm a teacher by trade I can show identification that I am and I can give you a ride to the airport". We quickly said no thank you! This lady was up to some scam, her story changed and it was very akward, hopefully she did not convince some other backpackers tot get into her car/torture chamber and rob them.
Our flight was very quick and when the doors opened for us to walk down the steps and to the airport the humidity about knocked us backward! There were dark looking storm clouds over the horizon broken up by palm trees everywhere, we walked through the thick air and were excited to be in the tropics! After picking up our packs we waited a bit over an hour for our Greyhound to come. While waiting we over heard workers on their smoke break talk about all the flooding they are having around Queensland, it is the rainy season but they have gotten the most rain they've seen in 70yrs. I thought, "oh goodness we have come right into the crazy weather", uhg look out for crock's in the puddles!
The bus ride went by fast, the road was fine (we flew over most of the flooding) and we arrived at Airlie beach around 9pm. As we got our packs from under the bus and it started to down pour! We ran under the bus stop but it was crowded by others from our bus and people waiting for a very late bus to take them south toward Brisbane. We sat and waited and watched the amount of rain that was coming out of the sky, we were shocked and we lived in Portland so we know a thing or two about rain. There was a quick break so we ran to the bathroom a few yards away, inside there was tinny pink lizard/geckos on the walls, so cute! The rain started again and kept coming, soon the parking lot was turning in to a swimming pool. We talked to a kid at the bus stop who told us where all the hostels were located, we had a tent spot reserved but we did not know the way and really didn't feel like setting up at tent in a tropical storm.
After 30 minutes of hanging out at the bus shelter rain let up and we set out to see if we could find a dry place to stay for the night. Airlie beach was crazy, there were bars connected to all the hostel and lots of young kids partying it up. Four hostels on the main drag were booked which was frustrating because we were tired but a relief since it was loud and a few groups of drunk guys walked past us like they were looking for a fight starring us down! WTF! Good thing I had all of our knives handy just in case of emergency! Ugh, at this point it was 11pm all the places were full and we were waiting for this guy to come and tell us if the last hostel was full or not. While waiting two girls asked us if we were staying at the place or not, we told them we were trying and were waiting for they guy to come and let us know, they seemed to want to tell us something but left, a few minutes later they showed back up and said they had an extra bed in their dorm room, it was just them and there friend. How sweet, we told them we would wait for the guy and if he did not have a spot for us we would give them a call. The stupid guy never showed, and while the offer was nice of the girls we didn't want to get into drama with the hostile or crash the girls party so we said F-it lets go to the motor park. A guy who told us his hostel was full did tell us we needed to take a cab out to our motor camp and told us the name, so we got a cab and headed to our new home for a few days.
Our camp was a ways out of town so we were grateful not to walk it with our heavy packs, the lady said she would leave us our spot number in a blue box infront of reception, she did not. We decided to walk around and set our tent up in the driest spot we could find even if it was a powered site. After about 10min we found a spot that was not dry but it was not flooded, it was also one of the highest spots in the camp, there were sand bags stacked on some of the camp roads which made us a little uneasy incase of potential flooding. 5min after setting up the tent the down poor came back. We were both overly tired and hot so we could not fall asleep and when the rain would start again it was so loud! It was a long night but we did manage to stay dry.
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