We weren’t quite ready to check that out yet, though, and headed on to the dirt road that takes you, once you’ve negotiated O My God Hill, alongside Gloucester Passage, delivering glimpses of blue water as you go and delivers you to the rather nondescript car park at the back of Montes Reef Resort.
The car park might be nondescript, but there’s nothing low key about the view across the water on a good day, and we were there on a day as good as any we’d experienced.
Having taken time to enjoy view and watch The Visitors take in the wow factor we headed for the reserved table and, in due course, demolished the substantial servings that regulars know to expect. We’re regulars, though not as regular as we’d like to be, which is why we weren’t lining up for anything too substantial in the evening.
With lunch out of the way we headed across to the Eco Resort to take in the view from a slightly different angle and headed back towards Cannonvale by way of Blackcurrant Drive, where a sight of the Warbocamper suggested The Warbler and Dragon Lady were engaged in grandparent duties on the way back from wherever they’d been.
The shopping excursion, once we’d made our way back along Dingo Beach Road, through Gregory River onto the Gregory-Cannon Valley Road and turned at Strathdickie to head into Cannonvale, proved the wisdom f deferring the purchase of nibbles until we got there.
I’d suspected The Visitors would be intrigued by unfamiliar grocery items but hadn’t thought we’d be there quite as long as we ended up spending in the aisles of Woolworths.
There was a slight hiccough when we arrived in downtown Airlie when we found ourselves going down the main street and being held up by street renovations rather than looping around the detour but that was soon forgotten once we’d checked in to Martinique and given the correct answer to the $64 question regarding one or two bathrooms in a two bedroom apartment.
We ended up in Unit 12, the penthouse in that particular block of units and the view was quite magnificent. A bit of rest and recuperation, a spot of preparation as far as nibbles were concerned and, as the sun went down we were ready for an extended spell of nibbling, drinking and interesting conversation that filled in a goof three and a half hours.
Having seen Psychologist Girl down to the cab that was waiting outside Reception I headed back, trying not to think about the need to fill in the details of the day’s activities in the morning.
By this point it was getting perilously close to ten, and given an appointment with a shuttle bus at seven-fifteen I didn’t like my chances.