The Whitsundays - Sailing and Diving

March 2007

After nearly two years working in Australia for Connell Wagner, I finished work for the final time with them on Friday 9th March 2007.

With still over a week to go until I flew out of Australia I decided to go for one last Australian holiday. One place where I had not been to on the east coast of Australia was to the Whitsunday Islands. Everyone says that the Whitsundays are so beautiful and that I should go before leaving. I'd considered going plenty of times before but as the main thing that everyone goes to the Whitsundays for is sailing, and as I get sea sick with the slightest wave, I'd never gone.

However, before leaving Australia I wanted to do some more diving. And as diving more often than not involves sailing of some sort, I decided to go for it and book a 3 day 2 night trip to the Whitsundays and the Great Barrier Reef.

During my time in Australia I'd become a qualified PADI Open Water Diver. However, due to one thing or another (which generally involved having too much beer on a Friday and Saturday night meaning that I couldn’t dive the following day) I'd not made the most of my diving qualification and had only completed a couple of dives since getting my PADI about a year ago.

The Kiana, the boat that I booked the trip on appeared to be geared up for diving as well as sailing (much more than most of the other boats advertised around the Islands which mostly appeared to be geared up to taking 30 or so European backpackers around the islands in a drunken stupor). The boat was also about the only one that seemed to go out to the Barrier Reef from Airlie Beach. From Airlie Beach, the reef is quite a way out from the main land, much further than it is from say Cains, which means that not a lot of the boats go all the way out to the reef.

Fourteen of us plus a crew of three and my sea sickness tablets departed from Airlie Beach on a beautiful morning on Monday 12th March. Fortunately for me the sea was as calm as anything, so much so that the crew couldn't use the boat's sails for the next two and a half days and had to use the boats motor instead. The captain kept apologising that we couldn't do any "actual sailing" but to me with my sea sickness this was an absolute god send.

On the first day we sailed for around 5 hours before reaching the reef where we had time for just one dive and some snorkelling before dusk. There were just four of us on the boat who were qualified divers and we dived with the diving instructor to a depth of around 10m for around 40 minutes. As the attached photographs show, on the dive we saw lots of different types of fish, turtles, and a couple of reef sharks, but no sting-rays or anything bigger.

Unfortunately, by the time we had finished our dive and the instructor had taken people out on introductory dives it was too late to do any more diving and we anchored up for the night.

Fortunately the sea was relatively calm during the night but nevertheless sleeping below deck was a bit cramped and after an uncomfortable night we were woke at 6am for our second dive which was due to start at 7am. The dive site was in a slightly different part of the same reef that we dived at the previous day and was at a section of reef where the reef suddenly drops by around 70m forming a bit of a sheer cliff. The dive was again fantastic and we dived for around 35 minutes down to a depth of around 16m. As with the dive on the previous day, we again saw lots of fish but this time lots of the fish were bunched up together in schools. On one particular occasion we were all stopped near the bottom of the sea bed when two turtles swam right over our heads around 10m above us.

The rest of the morning was spent snorkelling with a further dive towards the end of the morning. Then after lunch we moved the boat slightly to a dive spot called the "Stepping Stones". I've now done about 10 proper dives plus countless 'introductory' dives (including one in an old water filled quarry in Leicestershire, England, during January when there was snow on the ground which put me off diving for about 10 years), but this final dive of the trip was the best dive I've ever done. Not so much for the fish life that we saw as this was much the same as on the previous three dives, but because on this dive we swam through canyons, tunnels, caves etc. Unfortunately due to the depth and time of previous dives we could only dive for around 30 minutes before we had to surface. But nevertheless, the dive was just fantastic.

After the diving, it was then a long cruise back towards the main land and the Whitsunday Islands again using the boat's motor as there was still no wind for sailing.

That night we had a storm. Fortunately though, we had anchored up for the night in the shelter of one of the islands which protected us from the worst of the rough seas.

The following day we visited Whitehaven beach which is always advertised as one of the highlights of the Whitsunday Islands. Unfortunately after the storm of the previous night, the weather wasn't the best, being cloudy and overcast and I don’t think the beach looked as good as it would have done in the sun. Nevertheless, it was still pretty spectacular although I still think the beaches in Southern Thailand are the best in the world that I visited so far.

After a morning spent at Whitehaven Beach, we began the sail back to the mainland and Airlie Beach this time under sail as the wind had finally picked up. We arrived back at the mainland at around 4pm where we all bid our farewells to the crew and to each other.

Then after a night out and a catch up with a few of those on board, it was back to Brisbane the following day for a couple of days before it was time to fly out of Australia and begin the long journey back to the UK.

All in all, the trip to the Whitsundays was fantastic. The diving was good although we didn't see all that much of the Whitsunday Islands themselves. However, as it was mainly the diving that I went on the trip for, this was a secondary matter and I would recommend the trip and boat to anyone wanting to do a diving trip around the Whitsundays.

[The majority of the photographs were taken by the diving instructor who doubled up as the official photographer as well over this and other trips. However, there are some photographs of mine attached - you can probably guess which ones these are due to the vast difference in quality]

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