Airlie Beach

One place I've been wanting to visit for years is Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands. We stayed at the Best Western Colonial Palms motel for $105, a booking we made on Lastminute.com. The view from the room had water glimpses:

Airlie Beach lived up to all the great things I've heard about it, with palm-fringed beaches:

The township itself is quite youth-oriented with pubs and backpacker hostels:

It's a departure point for many well-known islands such as Hayman, Hamilton and South Molle
but we only had one night there so we soaked up the ambience of Airlie itself:

Hopefully one day we can fly back and visit the islands but for now we're very happy with what we saw:

This is the lovely lagoon which is patrolled and safe to swim in: