We picked up our Renault Koleos SUV rental first thing in the morning from Avis in Cairns and entered the Bruce Highway (also named the A1) headed south by 9:30 am for our 8-hour (650 km) drive south to Airlie Beach. The drive itself was thankfully uneventful and there were little signs of the extensive flooding that had closed the rail and interrupted bus service.
The countryside was emerald green for most of the trip. The highway snaked its way through continuous sugarcane plantations punctuated with the occasional banana farm. The road is crisscrossed with several narrow gauge railways that are used to transport the sugarcane harvest to the processing mills. Sugarcane is a fairly low-maintenance crop. It grows like grass in a field. There is no need for fertilization or irrigation and the farmers only have to wait for the crop to ripen and get two harvests per year. The work is in the cutting. In the days of less environmental awareness, farmers burned mature sugar cane. This solved two issues. The chaff was burned away leaving the actual canes to harvest as well as driving the snakes and vermin from the fields to ensure the safety of the harvesters. Crops are now harvested by machines. Farmers only have to till the soil and replant it every 5 or 6 years just to replenish the soil.
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Cane fields |
The Dividing Mountain range runs north to south over 4000 km and remained visible off our right (east) side along the way. The highway strayed near the coastline occasionally for glimpses of the beach. The skies were covered in blue and the temperature hovered around 30 degrees for the drive.
We stopped in Townsville for lunch and gas ($1.77 per liter) at 2:00 PM and arrived at Airlie Guesthouse in Airlie Beach at 6:00 PM. Our host Mick was there to greet us and we settled in for our four-night stay.
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Here we are in Airlie Beach |
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The view from our deck at Airlie Guesthouse |
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Another view from our deck |
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