Elly May at Home and Abroad: Airlie Beach

AIRLIE BEACH

The Jewel In The Tiara

My parents had a long association with Queensland, first formed during the darkest days of 1941 and 42, when it was widely held that the Yellow Peril would shortly be making a take-over bid. Their stories included steamy heat, the wet, the narrow-gauge railway, mosquitoes and tropical diseases. Now that the Queensland Governments, so colouful and intriguing, have taken care of all that, things have changed. Of all the places that have been made over into something unimaginable, Airlie Beach is the most remarkable I've seen yet.

White Hamilton Island was quite as one would expect, for a place where no cars are permitted, and life is conducted at the pace of a golf cart with limited battery power, Airlie Beach is a place with several faces, all with make-up as stark and spectacular as an Italian mask. Life moves a little more swiftly.

Tourist Mecca

There is the Tourist Mask, with shining sun-screen, above a costume of loud shirt, huge hat or bandana, baggy tropical shorts and thongs - designer camera now being up-graded to iPad. Single males congregate in Bars, Pubs, fill small buses and queue with feigned nonchalance on the loading docks for cruises. Many pairs of Available Young Females with strictly casual clothing and minimal footwear wander hopefully in the Main Thoroughfares. Mated couples rarer, Juveniles almost absent. Couples morphing later in life into the sub-species Grey Nomad.

Caravan Park Mecca

Grey Nomads fill the caravan parks and wander the streets in pairs. Frequently in supermarkets buying half a basket-full of items and ignoring all newspapers, they can be seen window-shopping or talking happily with total strangers of all sorts. They will form ranks of four, six or even eight at 1600 hours for Drinkies, usually without knowing any of their party - almost like Office Parties of the past.

Then there is the Affluent Resident Mask. Colour optional and fully adjustable, with additions by Botox, toupee and subtle surgery above designer clothes (several years past it, now, but classy none-the-less) and in a Lexus, Mercedes or slumming it in an Audi. Well-connected with the Floating Rich but not part of the Yacht Squadron, they play golf and bowls, visiting only the best Cafe Set goss spots. They have as little as possible contact with the other Masks.

Then there is the Alternate Lifestylers. Not as common as of yore, but still easily identified by dreadlocks, cloth single strap carry bag, baggy crotched splotchy-coloured lower body clothing and carefully re-modelled upper body drapings. Dirt-caked bare feet with toe-rings, sometimes wearing home-made tyre-tread sandals. An air of herbs and nonchalance is also notable.

Currently the road-works plague is in full swing in the main drag of Airlie Beach, dividing the businesses and decimating profits.

We made several sorties to more impressive places like Dingo Beach and Conway Beach, neither of which had the tinsel feeling of Airlie Beach. So it's not the '... Beach' that does it!