Written by Alex
Note: if you haven’t yet read day 36 or 37, scroll down and catch up first!
Today was our first relocation by car – a 7.5 hour drive from Cairns to Airlie Beach and then an hour ferry ride from Port of Airlie to Hamilton Island.
The drive was mostly without incident for the first 7 hours or so. The weather was good and the highway is decent. In many areas it is one lane in each direction, but they often have passing lanes so people pass slower traffic in those moments. Most people drive at or just over the speed limit (not like in the US where we go at least 10-20 mph over). With about 35 minutes to go, we were passing through a small work zone where they had traffic alternating through one lane. As we just finished passing through the zone, my driver’s side door window exploded into the car! Luckily none of the safety glass hit me. I was stunned but pulled over. Workers said a machine on the side of the road must have kicked up a rock and it struck the window. We didn’t get a good photo of the damage, but you can see the small pieces of glass left behind in this picture I took later.
Dealing with the window delayed us as we had to clean glass off the seat and out of the window opening, call Europcar (the rental company) and get info from the contractor doing the work that broke it. We were told to go to the nearest Europcar which was in Airlie Beach, so we got back on the road with no window and pulled up to the Europcar office. Chances of us making our ferry to Hamilton Island were now slim because of our delay. When we got there the door was locked and a sign said they were at the airport. Ferry hopes crushed, we would not make it to Hamilton Island today. 😕
I called Europcar once again and they were not much help. So we decided to take the 40 minute ride to the airport in the hopes we could swap out cars and catch a ferry in the morning. When we got there the place was pretty dead, but luckily the Europcar people were still there and they were very helpful. We filled out an incident report and they brought another car out for us, an Equinox. It’s slightly smaller than the car we had, but very similar. We then found a hotel for the night in Airlie Beach and made our way back there to check in and have dinner. On the way out of the airport we spotted a wallaby (smaller than a kangaroo) checking us out.
The room at our impromptu overnight spot (Heart Hotel) is small but nice. It has a balcony with a decent view of the water (across the parking lot). We ate at the restaurant in the same building (The Deck) and it was excellent. I had scallops with chorizo and Kim had chicken. 
We will be up early to head over to Hamilton Island tomorrow. If the window is the worst thing that happens to us on the trip, we will be ok with that!
Until tomorrow – cheers!
