Airlie is nice... I've spent a lot of time there. Its a bit of a paradox actually... On one hand its a compusory stopping point for every single backpacker working their way up the coast, so at night the main street flows with guiness and vomit and paraletic british girls.
But, on the other hand, its like every other town on the coast north of brissy... ie: a retirement village.
I could live there, quite happily. Hervey bay is nice too... and bowen, and even bundaberg, gladstone... Mackay is a boom town at the moment.
Head north young man... its the promised land. (oh and it gets better the further north you get :evil: )