Airlie Beach / Brisbane, Australia

So after 11 days I finally made it out of Cairns. I was having trouble finding rides that followed through and thought that taking the bus lacked the adventure I came on this trip to find, but finally got a ride down to Airlie Beach. Responding to a post on a hostel message board for people needed to share fuel costs, I eventually got a ride from who I thought was going to be a backpacker but turned out to be a woman in her mid 50's with an affinity for professional poker tournaments who had lived in Cairns for the last 25 years and just this past year decided to move to Sydney. So Liz, another french backpacker named Antoine and make the 10 hour drive south to Airlie Beach, that ended up taking two days. Liz was great to us, cooking us really good meals in her RV trailer all the way down, but was a very slow driver and did not like to drive for long periods at a time. So me and Antoine had a nice first night sleeping in the back of her car being eaten alive by bugs. It was also a nice change of pace though as she took us on tours of all the towns as we went through on the way like the Military city of Townsville. Finally after two full days we made it to Airlie Beach and I split ways with Antoine as he was leaving on a boat to the Whitsunday Islands the next day. Looking back I didn't do a whole lot in Airlie. Its a really pretty place, with a nice beach and tons of sailboats both personal and for taking tourists to the Whitsunday islands. During the time I was there was "footy weekend" where tons of Australian football armature club teams go somewhere together, wear their jerseys, drink and watch the championship game of pro Australian football. I don't really get it, but I guess they like to match and it was fun to party with them and see the "Yankees" of footy beat the smaller team (it was actually the second footy weekend, the weekend before the game ended in a draw so they played a whole new game a week later. Again, not a lot of reasoning to it). Speaking of sports, I had an interesting husky football experience where the only way I could follow the game is to call my parents long distance and have them put the phone by a radio. All the people in the Internet cafe must have thought I was nuts with a phone to my ear, not saying anything, just periodically jumping up and fist pumping; but it was worth it in the end when we kicked the winning FG. Another thing I am starting to notice is that the backpacker trail is pretty well established, because I am starting to see the same faces around hostels. I think this is good because it makes travelling easy and fun, but sometimes you wonder if you are just going with the flow. I am meeting some very interesting people though, and just talking to people learning a lot. After some time of failing to find a job on one of the sailboats and laying on the beach, I found a really cheap flight to the city of Brisbane. The two hour airport shuttle bus was a 45 min late, and despite this and the pleas of a few of us on the bus, the driver decided to take his "state mandated" 15 min break right in the middle of the 1.5 hour bus ride that is an "airport shuttle" intended to get peopel to the airport to make their flights. So, we got to the airport with 15 minutes until takeoff and about 5 of us sprinted as fast as we could through the airport, only to find out the flight was delayed (I guess everything in Australia is late, but at least things worked out.) After the flight it was too late to get to the city and find accommodation, so me, an Italian ski instructor named Victoria and a German trying to escape the rain of Melbourne named Max, spent an extremely uncomfortable night on the floor of the Brisbane airport. Today I mader it to the city, found a hostel and landed a "labor" job paying pretty good money that kinda just fell into my lap, so tomorrow I start that job that is supposed to last two weeks and will almost pay for all my time in Australia. May not be a lot to write about while I settle in for a couple weeks, but hopefully I will get to really know Brisbane for better or worse.