Blogs from Whitsundays, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 2

We spent today enjoying the beautiful Whitsunday Islands! Our sailboat, the S.V. Domino, was a wooden boat, built in New Zealand with local pine wood, and ultimately was sailed across the Tasman Sea to Australia by our captain, Reg. The boat has a capacity of ten people on journeys into the Whitsundays, so there were eight of us tourists, Reg, and his deckhand, Dale, on the boat today. There was very little wind in the islands today thanks to a lingering mass of high pressure in the area, so we supplemented our wind power today with the motor. Our journey to and from Black Island was slow, but the island scenery made the journey spectacular! On the way out, we were treated to views of dolphins swimming alongside us. On the way back, we saw dolphins, ... read more

We slept in and lounged about the room for a bit in the morning, making it to breakfast just as they were about to finish service. Sonia and John returned to the marina after breakfast to watch the daily feeding of the giant grouper. The skies were again a beautiful blue, but it was much windier than the previous day and our plans for waterskiing had to be cancelled due to the wind. As an alternative, we were offered an opportunity to go jet-skiing which we accepted, although Andrew was quite disappointed that he was not old enough (16 yrs) to be allowed to drive. The tentative plan was that John and Lauren would drive two jet-skis and Sonia and Andrew would ride on back, but Sonia ultimately decided to stay on land and shoot photographs ... read more

No one was happy at the 5:45 wake-up call, but there is only one daily non-stop to the Whitsunday islands and we didn’t want to miss the plane. Heavy rain started to fall in Cairns just as we were ready to board the turbo-prop, and we struggled to avoid getting soaked as we crossed the tarmac. We arrived at Hamilton Island just after 9am and then boarded a small seaplane for our short trip to Hayman Island. Views (and photos) were fantastic from our cruising altitude of 1000 feet and the skies were pleasantly sunny after our rainy morning in Cairns. The plane did in fact land on the water and then taxi onto shore on Hayman. Andrew noted that the sea-plane can travel on land, sea and air! We were pleased that our rooms were ... read more

Hi People, Today was our day tour of the Whitsundays!!! So excited!! We had a hostel pick up for the Whitsundays tour at 8am, we chose to go on a day tour that crammed all the sites that a 2 or 3 day tour would have. We chose to go with Ocean Rafting, it was expensive for a day trip at $150 each but all companies are expensive as everyone wants to go to the Whitsundays (and we left it late to book up). We were on a raft of about 50 people (50% of these were American high school graduates) it was bumpy on the way out however Vick wasn’t sick on a smaller boat for once. L We had about 50 minutes on the way out of trying to spot animals; we saw a ... read more

Hamilton Island; absolute heaven! After a busy couple of weeks we were all ready to arrive here on the 23rd and relax. No cars here so we have a golf buggy to drive around the island. Had to meet the ferry at the marina to pick up all our groceries and wine for the Christmas week then fit all the boxes onto the buggy to get them back up the hill in 36 degree heat, but we managed! Golf buggy is now decorated with tinsel! Lovely Christmas Eve with good food and a bottle of bubbly, downloaded Nativity to watch at lunchtime while out of the hottest part of the day, so definitely feeling a bit more festive now. Following our festive lunch we jumped on to our buggy and went down to the post office ... read more