The final stage of our trip, a sojourn in the Whitsundays, had a false start with Hook Island, then began in serious with my dive trip to the outer reef.  We bailed out on Hook Island, forfeiting five days’ prepaid room, partly because the weather made everything we had hoped to do (snorkeling, diving, small boats) either unrewarding or too dangerous, and because we found the staff on Hook Island poorly trained and unhelpful.

We stayed several days in Airlie Beach instead; a typical resort town, catering largely to back-packing college students, and fun for a while.  We had some good meals, two of them in our resort, the Coral Sea Resort, which is a very comfortable place.  Our room has a nice view out across a bay filled with moored small boats toward a thickly forested hill and the sunrise over a couple of the islands.  We did a little shopping in town, but for the most part it wasn’t much – a main street perhaps eight blocks long. Airlie beach does have a very nice park, with a large saltwater pond / swimming pool (no stingers!)  There are several picnic tables, where we often had lunch, with flocks of lorrikeets in the trees.

The Great Barrier Reef

I scheduled a dive trip on a jet boat with Seejet cruises.  I was dismayed to see nearly 3 dozen people on the boat, but it turns out most were snorkelers; there were 13 divers, of whom 5 were doing demonstration dives.  The water would not be crowded – but the boat was, and several of the snorkelers were seasick.  The waves weren’t bad by North Pacific standards – 3-4 feet, with an occasional 6 or 7 foot roller – but by Coral Sea standards it was pretty rough.  The reef itself is well worth the trip out to see; we were near the end of one stretch, and as far as you could see to the north there stretched a line of breakers.  We arrived while the tide was still relatively high, so you could barely see the reef inside the breakers, but by the time we had finished the first dive it was nearly low, and you could also clearly see the reef stretching out northward.

 I did not realize the boat combined snorkeling with diving or I would have looked for a different company; there was talk on the way out of returning to dive by one of the islands if it was too rough for the snorkelers and ride-alongs.  All the divers were near riot at the very thought, since SeeJet charges about twice the ordinary charge for island dives.  I was unimpressed by several other things about the SeeJet operation, in fact.  The dive crew was professional and competent, and I thoroughly enjoyed my two dives, but the operation is very chintzy; I would not go with them again if there were any alternatives.  In addition to cramming the boat full of snorkelers and ride-alongs, they were very cheap with fresh water to drink, as well as other amenities.

 Diving is very dehydrating, mainly because of the dry compressed air but also because of the salt – and dehydration can increase the risk of decompression sickness.  Consequently, every other dive operation I have dived with supplies divers with tons of drinking water as well as juice between dives and after the last dive.  Every other operation also encourages divers to accompany the dive master if they want (Lady Eliot requires it).  SeeJet provided two jugs of juice and two jugs of fresh water for 35 divers and snorkelers – then seemed to expect you to buy bottled water!  If you wanted to accompany the dive master, they charged an extra $15 per dive.

I was also somewhat surprised by the divemaster's attitude toward the sea life.  Almost everything I've ever read about diving has emphasized the "look - but don't touch" rule; expecially in over-dived waters like the barrier reef.  The SeeJet divemaster actively encouraged us to pick up, stroke, and touch various underwater animals.  To demonstrate, she picked up one and put it on her head and clowned around, and encouraged the divers to do likewise - all for the benefit of the dive-along underwater photographer, who later offered to sell us videos of the dive.  I don't know how robust these animals are; maybe being handled twice a day by a dozen or more divers won't harm them.  But it seemed oddly discordant with the message the Australian National Park Service (and the two major amateur dive associations) puts out!

Overall, one of the pleasures of traveling in Australia is that, unlike the U.S. and much of Europe, we rarely felt that everybody we dealt with was trying to nickel and dime us to death.  SeeJet was an unpleasant exception to this rule, and it was a blemish on an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable day.  It was worth the hassle to see the reef and to have the opportunity to dive the reef, but I would research other opportunities before I would go with them again.

 We tied up to a buoy anchored inside a sheltered cove within the reef, in about 14 meters of water.  For the first dive, visibility was excellent; you could easily see the bottom as soon as you got in.  We descended, waited for the dive master (who had problems with her rig and had to change air tanks), then circled the cove slowly, went outside the cove to a wall that drops off probably to about 30 meters (we only went down to about 17), then returned.  We didn’t see as much animal life (I saw one white-tipped reef shark quite close up; some other divers saw a second shark and a few saw a turtle) but the coral was truly magnificent; lots of variety in form and color, both soft and hard coral.  I had decided to try an underwater camera with a flash, so I took several pictures of coral formations and a few of some of the many colorful fish.

 The second dive was a drift dive; a rubber tender took us all outside the cove and up-current about a hundred meters.  We entered by falling over backward, descended straightaway to about 12-13 meters, and drifted with the current back to the mouth of the cove, entered the cove, and returned to the boat.  We saw fewer fish, but even more variety of coral on this dive.  Unfortunately I had problems with a leaking face mask for the entire second dive and spent about half my time clearing my mask.  I was trying out LaJean’s old mask, because it is black rubber and lets in less distracting ambient light – but I will use my own from now on.

 I met some nice people, as I always do on these dive trips, and chatted quite a bit with a woman from Sydney, Leonie, who was taking a demonstration dive.  As a dive experience, the two dives were not nearly as good as the dives on Heron and Lady Eliot, but I would not come here and miss diving on the outer reef itself if I could avoid it.  Seeing the reef, and knowing where you are and what it is, adds tremendously to the excitement, as it obviously did for all the divers.  The boat trip, in spite of the overcrowding and the shortage of water, was quite fun.

Sailing on the Jaspurr

Our trip on the Jaspurr started off inauspiciously, but it turned out to be a real treat.  We left port over an hour late to accommodate one of the passengers, Tim, a personal friend of one of the owners, who wanted to spend just one night on this kind of boat, after returning from a different sail and before starting on yet another boat.  Because of the late start, we motored rather than sailed to our first anchorage, and arrive there quite late.  Largely due to having dinner so late, aggravated by the passage over rough seas, LaJean felt ill and missed the first meal entirely.

In addition to Tim the other passengers included Guido, a retired Swiss Banker and his wife Elisabeth, who have lived in New York most of their adult lives, and two Aussies, Travis, a partner in a start-up tour booking agency and his wife Andy, 7 months pregnant.  As I got to know the other passengers better, I came to like all of them very much.  Travis’s background is remarkably similar to my own, since he comes from a family farm in South Australia.  Travis really won my respect when, on a stroll down White Haven Beach, he spent half his time picking up odd bits of garbage from the beach.  It didn't take long for the six of us to become quite good friends.

 Our crew consisted of Tony (the skipper) and Jackie (the hostess).  Jackie is an excellent cook, and fed us far too much.  Tony (pronounced almost like “tiny”) is personable and very humorous, ultra-thick Queensland accent, very professional in his approach to everything having to do with planning the trip and sailing the boat.  They were both first-rate and should we do this sort of trip again we would be inclined to ask for them specifically.

 The boat is very nice, a catamaran with two comfortable double bed bedrooms in either hull.  Each bedroom had a quasi-queen bed (because of the taper, one side was longer than the other) and a very efficient little toilet / sink / shower.  The shower consisted of a removeable sink faucet that could be adjusted to spray; you sprayed yourself all over, turned it off to soap up and shampoo, then rinsed – and waited for the toilet to dry before trying to sit on it again!  The water gathered in the bottom of the room; at the end of the shower you turned on a pump to pump it all out.  It worked much better than it sounds.  (But I don't think we'll be installing one at home.)  The crew’s quarters aren’t much; they have a head that is entered from the weather deck by an overhead hatch:  Tony slept inside a one-man tent on the netting that is strung between hulls.  The main cabin is very comfortably furnished; we ate there when weather was bad.  There was also a comfortable table and seating area at the stern, just outside the cabin, where we ate when weather permitted (all but two of the meals).

 The second day went better than the first.  We had a very good breakfast, and motored to a nice cove where we snorkeled – the only really good snorkeling I had  in the entire time in the Whitsundays.  We saw several lovely varieties, colors, and shapes of coral, and scores of different fish.  Among our favorite corals were a bright blue and a delicate pink.

Unfortunately, Andy accidentally banged her finger into an open clam shell and cut herself quite badly, so as soon as we had had lunch and transferred Tim to his other boat, we had to put in at Hayman Island (a very posh, very up-scale resort) so she could see a nurse. It was a good thing we did; they took out several pieces of clam shell, which would certainly have caused her some serious trouble had the wound not been attended to.  The people Tony talked with to get permission to tie up at the resort's pier seemed rather standoffish and even suspicious, as if we were trying to get away with something.  (They charged Andy $100.)  We were all pretty well offended.  The nurse was very nice and very professional; it was just the harbor staff that seem to be charged with screening out the riff-raff.  As one would expect, the accident brought everyone on the boat closer together; we were all very friendly from then until the end of the trip.  We all teased Andy about not sticking her finger into any more sea creatures’ mouths, and thanked her for giving us our only chance to visit exclusive Hayman Island.

 The weather stayed rather poor – it rained a little several times each day, the wind stayed at 20 knots and above, seas in the open water up to a meter and a half with occasional 2 meter swells.  We tried snorkeling one other time, at Chalky Beach, across the strait from White Haven Beach; we could tell the coral was beautiful and varied but the sediment was so badly stirred up that you could hardly see six feet, so we got out almost immediately and quit. We went on a couple of hikes, one to the top of a hill overlooking Whitehaven beach.  On that hike, I took several pictures of ourselves and our companions. On another hike, down along White Haven Beach, I saw a goanna and took several more pictures. 

 There was nothing really exceptional about the trip, but it was altogether pleasant throughout.  Abetted in part by Andy’s wound and in part by the closeness of living together on a small boat, we got to know each other quite well and felt like old friends by the end of the trip.  Much of the time was spent just sailing around, mostly in a rather dream-like state, which is quite relaxing.
 

Long Island – Whitsunday Islands Resort

 The trip over to Long Island was by a very minimal helicopter – no door, two passengers plus pilot.  I enjoyed the trip, flying about 1500 feet above the channel between the mainland and Long Island.  In the middle of the trip, I saw a golden-brown shark on the surface below – probably a black-tip reef shark.  LaJean (who is seriously acrophobic - and afraid of flying to boot) spent the entire trip with her eyes closed and a vice-like grip on my knee.

The resort is all we hoped it would be; comfortable but non-luxurious cabins, next to a small lagoon. The managers, Karen and Stuart, are very nice, and the food (mostly prepared by Stuart) is excellent.  The rest of the staff includes Ian, the boat skipper, Sarah, the Saturday relief skipper, Myrtle, the eccentric and grumpy female grey kangaroo, Stumpy, the goanna who is missing half his left front paw from some old fight or accident, and a whole herd of agile wallabies who flee in panic at the slightest sign of attention but otherwise spend the late afternoon and evening hours grazing on Karen’s flowers and shrubs.  The wallabies are beautiful, with dark stripes on their faces and white stripes on their neck. Partly because of their black markings and narrow faces, they manage to give the impression that they are accusing us of some vile crime (such as fancying wallaby steak for dinner.)  Myrtle is quite tame but doesn’t like to be petted and seems to be in a perpetual bad mood since, if someone does anything she doesn’t like, she growls menacingly at them.  The beach is small, gone when the tide is in; when the tide is out, there are beautiful and fascinating little sand-crabs, bright blue and less than an inch across.

As it happens, there were no other guests, so we had the place to ourselves for the entire week.  The first night here we had a very excellent Cajun style Barramundi (a white fish) and vegetables stir-fried over a campfire.  We ate at a picnic table under the palm trees, all very nice.  We ate outside under the stars all but two evenings, one when it rained lightly and one when we were treated to a genuine full-fledged tropical storm, wind and sheets of rain that lasted the greater part of the night. 

The first full day, Saturday, a standby boat skipper, Sarah, came to take us wherever we wanted to go.  Given the continued wind and high seas, we decided to go kayaking in an estuary. It was a lot of fun.  At first when I got in the kayak it felt quite tippy, but I soon learned to balance it; at the end of the trip we stopped at a beach on the island for lunch, and I kayaked back, nearly two miles against the wind.  The last half mile seemed pretty hairy, since it was out in the exposed part of the channel, with waves of up to two feet, but it was fine. 

 Kayaking through the mangrove swamp was very peaceful, with lots of bird calls in the background.  Several turtles stuck their heads up – all green, I think – and we saw something tracking through the water, barely below the surface, leaving a wake.  Could have been an eel or something; we couldn’t see it.  The most exciting part of the trip was early on, when a juvenile eagle ray jumped out of the water and landed smack on the front of my kayak, just a foot from me – it almost fell into the boat!  It was about a foot across, very pretty purple with white spots and a tail at least a foot long; it slid off into the water and promptly disappeared. 

LaJean says:  It was a good last place to stay.  The food was excellent, the company delightful.  The cabins were very comfortable with a large main bedroom, large bathroom with shower, and fair sized verandas with table/chairs.  Karen & Stuart moved a double lounge over for us to sit and read on.

 On Sunday there is no boat skipper, and in any event the weather continued to be mixed.  We had a genuine tropical storm at dinner time Saturday night – about two hours of really heavy rain, with more during the night, but it partially cleared Sunday morning.  I decided to take a long walk up to the top of the hill overlooking the resort, then down to a beach on the other side of the island.  There was a rather threatening sign posted at the beginning of the trail.  The trail is minimal, but not that much worse than some of the trails in Blue Mountain National Park, and those just have signs warning that the trail is not maintained and requires good hiking skills.

At Karen’s advice I just ignored the sign and proceeded. They have posted some very good explanatory signs here and there, and the rain forest is beautiful as it is everywhere, although after the heavy rain the night before it was extremely humid – my t-shirt was drenched with sweat within three minutes of entering the forest.  I took several pictures of the huge golden orb weaver spider, which is actually quite a beautiful insect.  It felt good to get out for a vigorous hike and stretch out my legs – took about an hour each way, plus stops for photos.  Given the shape of the trail I can’t have been going any more than about 1.5  or 2.0 mph, maybe 3 kph at most.  The beach at the far end was, like most of the beaches in the Whitsundays, mostly broken rock and cobbles, but quite pretty for all that. Most interesting of all was the mud-skippers in a little estuary, scores of them.  The largest was about 3 inches long.  When you approach too close, a dozen or so will skip across the top of the water and cling to a rock on the far side.  They seem to have an aversion to getting wet, since I never saw one actually swim through the water – they use their fins to skip across, almost walk on, the water.  I did manage to slip my camera up close to a couple for close-up photos.

 Sunday evening was pleasant and dry; we ate outside on the picnic tables again.  Stuart found a preying mantis which he showed us; we didn’t have our camera so didn’t get a picture.  It is a very pretty insect, green with red eyes.

 During the night it rained again, and I awoke to heavy, threatening clouds, which nixed my plan of possibly kayaking out to the point.  Karen said it looked like the weather might break in a day or two – but we’d heard that before!

Monday we went out with Ian on the sailboat with our snorkel gear. The snorkeling was impossible – we drove the dinghy across an area he said is filled with coral bommies and couldn’t even see the tops of any, so we didn’t bother getting into the water.  Instead, we just made a sailing day of it, tacking back and forth up the passage.  The wind was about right for sailing, the water a bit rough but not too bad, and we managed to have a very nice day after all.  I thoroughly enjoyed sailing along; it has a pleasant rhythm to it, and the beautiful islands drift slowly by, giving an excellent opportunity to see them in perspective.  Tuesday was rainy, all up and down the east coast according to the weather, so we went back to another mangrove area for more kayaking.  Wednesday morning, the weather began to clear so we tried another snorkel, off the end of the island about a half mile from the resort. The water was still pretty cloudy, visibility nothing to brag about. We went sailing again on Wednesday, in much calmer weather, and sailed around most of Long Island, but the wind almost totally died, so we had to motor the last of the way back to the lodge.

 In spite of my best efforts to keep up my own morale, I was feeling rather grumpy about the weather, which looked like it would finally clear up just when we had to leave.  Thursday morning, sure enough, when I got up the sky was totally clear, with only some patches of fog rising up between the islands, with not a breath of wind.  The plan was for us to catch the helicopter over to Hamilton Island, and given the clearing weather the helicopter company had lots of requests for charter flights, so they could only pick us up at about 9:30, which would mean spending the full day on Hamilton, bumming around waiting for the plane back to Sydney.

 At breakfast, I asked Karen if it wouldn’t be possible for Ian to take us snorkeling again and drop us off on Hamilton, since one of the spots we had gone earlier to check out for snorkeling was on Dent Island, very close to Hamilton.  She wasn’t sure, so they hemmed and hawed, but finally agreed.  We checked the south end of Long Island again, then went to the north end of Pine Island, where I had tried before, and found the conditions better but still not optimal.  Then we went back to a spot on Dent we had checked out during our first sailing expedition, and it looked much better.  Visibility was still mixed, with occasional clouds of plankton drifting through, but between clouds of plankton it cleared up to 20 feet or so.  It wasn’t clear enough to see the fish very well, but I could see the coral quite well.  I snorkeled there for some time, probably 40 or 45 minutes, and it was quite good, the best in fact that I’d seen in the Whitsundays.  There weren’t many large fish (some coral trout and another very colorful fish, about the size of a parrot fish, which I didn’t recognize) but lots of smaller fish.  The coral was spectacular – lots of blue and pink coral, coral in all shapes (except no fan coral), several different types of soft coral.  I took some photos with the underwater camera, in spite of the cloudy water, just to give some sense of the variety.

I would have gone longer, but I was wearing only a shortie wet suit, and there were some jellyfish in the water; I kept feeling little stings on my legs.  The stings weren’t bad, but I started feeling freaked out by the possibility of stingers.  Also LaJean wasn’t feeling very well – headachy and tired, and was getting tired of being in the sun.  And, finally, Ian had brought a worker over to trim the coconut palms, and had to get back to take him back to the mainland after lunch.  I felt it was quite accommodating of Ian to take us out Thursday morning.  Getting to have that one last really good snorkel in the better weather improved my mood a lot.

We still ended up with over 3 hours to kill on Hamilton Island.  After checking our bags at the airport we walked the half mile into “town,” a short strip of stores and restaurants next to the small boat harbor.  The resort area is built on a half mile wide neck of the island near the north end, with the shops and boat harbor on the west side and most of the hotels (including three genuinely ugly high rises) beginning at the center of the isthmus and extending all along the east shore, fronting on a fairly nice sand beach.  Unlike Airlie Beach, there are few boardwalks or other walkways, only along the resort area itself; if you want to walk across the island or to the airport you either walk on or along the road.  Transportation is mostly by little golf carts which they rent for $80.00 per day, $480 per week (that’s about what we paid for a medium sized car on the mainland!)

 We were not impressed with Hamilton Island – actually, LaJean was worse than not impressed.  Some of the low rise hotels are attractive but the whole is badly marred by the huge apartment tower near the center of the isthmus and the long high-rise hotel that stretches half the length of the beach.  The golf carts, although restricted to a speed of 20 kph, are a nuisance when you try to walk anywhere.  The place was filled with people looking half-bored.  The contrast made Whitsunday Wilderness Resort look even better.

 Whitsunday Wilderness Lodge is, all in all, a very special place.  It is too bad that we happened to be the only guests; they are set up to accommodate up to 16 people quite well, and if there had been even 3 or 4 other couples I think we would have enjoyed the opportunity to get to know them, as we have gotten to know other guests everywhere we have been.  The meals, breakfast, tea, and dinner in the open-air lodge are all quite special; we enjoyed the chance to get to know Stuart and Karen.  The only real negative about the place are the midges.  There are also quite a few mosquitoes, which become bothersome in the early morning and about sunset, but a good dose of mosquito repellant takes care of them.  (LaJean did return to Sydney with quite a few bites, however.  The mosquitos were terrible.  Use plenty of repellant if you come here.)  The midge bites do not leave a permanent itching bump the way mosquitoes do, but they are quite painful while they are biting.  Two of the six nights we were there they attacked us in bed and made it nearly impossible to get to sleep.  Both times I ended up getting out of bed and slathering a thick layer of insect repellant all over arms, face, and legs; each time that slowed them down enough that I was able to get to sleep, but it is pretty unpleasant in its own right.

 The positive things about the lodge, other than mealtimes, are many.  The setting, along the side of a narrow cove, is lovely, with rain forest behind, palm trees, and a little flower-filled meadow between.  In spite of their paranoid skittishness we loved the wallabies.  The forest is filled with bird calls, especially in mornings and evenings, including the Kukaburra, which we have come to love and will sorely miss.  Although I was quite disappointed by the way the weather impaired snorkeling opportunities, everything else was a lot of fun – the sailing, the hikes through the rain forest, the kayaking, both in the lagoon and in the mangrove swamps, and just sitting on the balcony gazing out across the passage to the rain forest on the far side.

 Ian, who is studying for his master skipper’s license, is very knowledgeable about rain forest and mangroves, and told us many interesting facts, a few of which probably will stick with us for a while.  The mangrove swamps are apparently vital to the barrier reef itself, since they trap most of the silt that runs off from the mainland during the monsoon rains.  They also provide important breeding grounds for many of the fish species, including some that are quite important commercially.  They are an interesting plant, more bush than tree; of the 20-odd species in the swamps we toured Ian was able to help us distinguish at least three (he can tell them all, but in many cases the differences require close examination of leaves, branches, and roots).  They all send up shoots from the roots to get air, send down air roots from the branches that eventually enter the mud and become new plants, concentrate surplus salt in older leaves that eventually yellow and die.

 I can see that snorkeling in the Whitsundays could be quite good during prolonged periods of still weather, but my experience is that it is nowhere near as good as in the southernmost Cays.  There are some larger patches of quite varied coral but for the most part it seems that the coral bommies are interspersed with the seaweed.  We saw a lot of bleached coral and dead coral.  When the coral bleaches (the algae all die out), at first it turns a really quite beautiful pure white.  If the algae do not return within a few months, the coral dies and turns an ugly grayish color, and the seaweed begins to grow over it.  Some of the finest examples of coral that I saw were blemished by large dead areas.  The reef is clearly under stress.

 I am glad we got the chance to see the reef, and I would like to return to Lady Eliot and Heron Islands, and maybe to the Wilderness Lodge.  I would also enjoy doing another sailing trip, but I would not spend this much time in the Whitsundays again.  Five days at Whitsunday Wilderness Lodge plus a three day sail would be plenty – although I do wish we had been able to do the sleepover on the reef at Fantasea Reef World.
 
 

return to top

return to OzPage

return to Ritchie Home Page

Last updated September 15, 2002
send comments to
cgrd@pdx.edu

.