Whitsunday Islands

29/02/13 to 04/03/13 -  It was time for us to say goodbye to Kavi so we took a cab to the airport for our flight to Queensland.  We realised in the cab that we had forgotten the nice sandwiches that Flora had spent an hour to make the night before.   We texted Kavi to let her know and we hope that she ate them or gave them to her workmates.

It was a 2 hour flight to Mackay and an extra 2 hours by bus to Airlie Beach.  When we arrived, the weather wasn’t so good, but we went to one of the tens of travel agencies to book ourselves a 3 day boat trip to explore the famous Whitsunday islands for the following day.


The Whitsunday islands are considered to have one of the best beaches in the world, Whitehaven Beach, with pure white sand and clear blue/green water.  The islands are also located right on the fringe of the Great Barrier Reef, and so the seas around them are teeming with marine life, with several good snorkelling and diving spots.

The next day, the weather was quite bad but we were off across the sea aboard a very nice 18 metre sailing boat called ‘SV Whitehaven’. There were 19 people in total, 16 tourists plus 3 crew (to drive the boat and prepare the food for us). We came from all over the world; Europe, North America, South America and Oceania. The group was very nice and friendly and we were all of similar age.

The first day was a bit tough, and after a long “voyage” with choppy water along the way, nobody was really talking to each other as we all felt a bit sea sick. We finally reached our first stop and moored up to have some lunch.

After lunch we left the boat and went by dingy to a small beach on Whitsunday Island, where we went on a short bushwalk to a lookout on top of a hill. We were blown away by what we saw and forgot about the long journey. The view was over Whitehaven Beach and the surrounding estuary, and we could see Stingrays swimming in the lagoon directly below us. On top of that, the weather had brightened up and we spent the afternoon down on the beach, resting and swimming. We also watched the baby Lemon sharks and the rays swimming past us in the shallow water.

In the evening we had few drinks and it was a good call as the boat was swaying a lot during the night and it probably helped us to sleep, although we still woke up a few times as it was like a sauna in our cabin with the window shut.  Flora woke up every couple of hours to shut the tiny window due to the rain, then would open and close it again as the weather kept changing. She also fixed couple of doors which were squeaking.




The next day, we took some kayaks to explore another bay on Hook Island and we did some snorkelling.   We saw some very nice corals and fish.  The highlight was swimming with an approximately 100 year-old turtle… that was quite magic. He was so peaceful as he swam.

In the afternoon we did some more snorkelling.  We also saw some very nice, and big, colourful fish, including the parrotfish, as well as some pretty giant clams.  We also saw some big jellyfish and Elvis.  Elvis is a giant lump-headed wrasse and is named this because he is the king of the area.  His wife is called Priscilla and Elvis used to be a female.  He had an amazing pattern on his body and was very friendly, swimming right with us and he looked like he wanted to kiss us.

We moved on again to Hayman Island and moored the boat for the evening.  We took an aperitif on the beach until the sunset and then went back to the boat.  As we returned, several huge bat fish were circling the boat and coming very close, they particularly liked Flora as she swam back.  As it grew dark we began to hear the predatory fish as they came looking for dinner, and we could hear sharks splashing around in the water a few metres from the boat.  We could also see plankton lighting up as fish swam into them and a few bright red squid swimming around.

The captain gave us a talk about what we had seen during the day, including the fish and the corals. It was fascinating and we have to say that we are not scared of sharks anymore but certain type of shelves and corals as well as Irkandju jellyfish (which is a deadly 2 cm long and transparent jellyfish).


The next morning we had one more snorkel before pulling up to a lagoon and doing short bushwalk up to see some aboriginal cave paintings before heading back to Airlie Beach.  We stayed one more day there to relax and catch up on some sleep before we headed back to Mackay airport the next morning.