Whitsunday Islands

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Queensland: Airlie Beach - gateway seaside town to The Whitsunday Islands, named by Captain Cook when he sailed through them on Whitsunday in 1770. The Whitsundays comprise of 74 beautiful islands most of which are protected by national park and only 7 have resorts developed on them.

We left Noosa the weather was changing and we set off further North to Airlie Beach with the hope that the weather would not break before we could go sailing round this popular water paradise. This is a place we have wanted to visit for such a long time, all the photos and reviews of the area are fantastic. We based ourselves in Airlie Beach (that has no beach) for a couple of nights and sure enough the wet weather started to set in! Fortunately, Airlie has a lovely manmade lagoon and we could do some real swimming- i.e. 50 meters long, odd though, no one else was using it. Most of the time we couldn’t even see the sea due to the mist and the tour operators started to do exceptionally good standby rates for Whitsunday sailing cruises so we decided to go for it, to hell with the rain and grey seas, we may not visit this area again and it’s much more expensive to do a trip in the summer. So Anaconda 3 became our home for 3 nights and we made do with our tiny cabin. The 3 crew were good fun (2 Irish, 1 Aussie), the Aussie captain was a miserable bugger and possibly a psychopath, the dive guide, was from NZ, he was great and had a brilliant approach to the ‘have a go try-divers that were on board. The sailing was great particularly when we travelled back from the Barrier Reef, we were able to travel at eleven and half knots on this 120 ton sailing vessel and the deck was about 45 degrees when we did this.

The most memorable dive was on the Barrier reef at night, not because of sharks, although they may have been there but we didn’t see any…. but because of the giant Trevally (max length 1.7m and wt 63kg). The four of us were buzzed by about 10 throughout the dive; they used our torch beams to pick off the fish for their supper! Unfortunately the dive guide got in the way and was nearly knocked unconscious by one. He was very stunned and lost his regulator from his mouth. He was not looking too well afterwards and a Doc on board as a guest checked him out for a head injury. The next day he was fine.

After the sailing trip some guests went out with the crew and the 2 Irish guys got very drunk drinking pitchers of beer through straws.

We were in Airlie Beach when England played Sweden and were woken by the Backpacker bar singing ‘GOD SAVE THE QUEEN’ AT 4.30 am!

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Photos

Whitehaven Beach
This really is white and reputed to be the 3rd most beautiful beach in the world?

Travelling in Style to Whitehaven
View from Anaconda

Barrier Reef
Fabulous Gorgonia fan and Brittle star(crinoid)

Back at Airlie
We really enjoyed the sailing trip and the weather was better than we expected

Comments

[Linda Blake]

You look great
You look ten years younger, freedom a wonderful thing.