Day 28 Airlie Beach and our Three Island Tour. 2 August 2016
Our day started early, on the bright side, we organised to be picked up and dropped off for our cruise today to take all the fuss out of it, on the down side, that meant getting up early. We were due for pick-up at 7:05, but the instructions asked us to be out ready for pick-up 30 mins prior to our given time! Like that was always going to happen.
We got out the front of the CP at 7am and were picked up at about 7:20, glad we were there early!! We eventually got to the port at about 7:50, checked in and waited for our scheduled 8:20 departure. We cruised with #Cruisewhitsundays, and they were great from start to finish. The woman that checked us in also turned out to be our tour leader, she was very friendly and chirpy all day.
Our Three Island Cruise started with a short, 30 min, cruise over to Daydream Island. It’s a small Island resort, yes the whole Island is the resort, but you can walk the length of it easily in under 20 mins. It was really well set up with so much to keep the guests occupied, from a living marine display pond, with rays, black tip sharks, and all sorts of fish and coral. They gave a 20 min talk at the pool for anyone who was interested at about 10am, we got the last bit of it, it seemed interesting. We tried to do an Ingress mission on the Island, but the Rainforest walk was closed, so we couldn’t access all the areas we needed to, to complete the mission. But it did mean we got to walk over the whole of the island and we did see most of the main attractions on the island, from the Mermaids at one end to the minigolf at the other. The whole experience was good and the resort looks very comfortable. 🙂 (Deb here, what Greg didn’t mention was that the rainforest walk was closed which meant we did not have access to 4 portals we needed to finish the mission, so we walked up an access road – that we weren’t allowed up, then Greg walked up a bit of a hill right into the rainforest, no tracks nothing it was thick vegetation. While I waited his return, a worker came up the road in a golf buggy and told me off very nicely and offered me a lift to the other end of the road, I declined and started walking back down the hill. Eventually Greg came out of the rainforest, unfortunately the reception was not very good in there and he didn’t get to finish the mission. Fortunately he was in one piece 🙂 )
Three Island Cruise
We got back on board our tour catamaran and headed off to Hamilton Island, about 40 mins away. We had lunch which was nice at the tavern overlooking the marina and then took a shuttle bus to the other side of the island to see a bit of the resort facilities and the beach. The resort is a step up from Daydream, with a more luxurious feel to it. There were beautiful pools, and a beach with all sorts of water activities available to be used. The island is so big that guests use “golf carts” ($80 per day to hire) and free shuttle buses to get around. There is a golf course attached to the resort, but it is on an island opposite the resort, a very short boat ride away!
It wasn’t until we left Hamilton that we were asked, via texts, if we had seen our niece Tara while we were on Hamilton. Both of us thought she worked on another Island, so we missed our opportunity, much sadness!
We were back on the catamaran at 1:15 heading to Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island. This beach continuously features in the top 10 beaches of the world. It has dazzling white sand that is made of 98.6% silica that has been ground to the fineness of talcum powder. We were told that if you got some wet sand and rubbed your rings in it that they would be polished up bright and shiny. It works. 🙂 The sand on the beach has its origins from a quartz flow from a volcano that has been eroded down by the sea over millennia. The beach actually sits on the lip of that ancient extinct volcano.
To get off the boat, the skipper basically nudges the bow of the boat onto the beach and they lower a long gangway down for everyone to walk off straight onto the beach. We walked down the beach to get away from the more crowded areas and then we swam for a while. We didn’t wear the protective “Stinger Suits” that were made available to everyone, it was well past stinger season. We did see one couple who shared a stinger suit, head to toe black lycra style material that covered their entire body except for a small facial opening, just a bit strange looking! After our swim we took shelter from the sun under some trees, and when the heat of the day had past we moved out onto the beach and Deb even sun baked for a while!!!!!!
Whitehaven Beach
When it came to leave we were told that we would get a bit wet getting back on board the boat. Our departure was due at 4pm, the same time as the lowest low tide of the year! To get onboard we eventually walked through just above knee high water to the gangplank.
We left the beach at about 4:30pm, later than we were scheduled due to the issues with the tide. Our trip back to Airlie was punctuated with brief stops and Hamilton and Daydream to drop people off at the resorts. We saw a lone humpback whale logging along in the waters just of Hamilton, and we also saw a very pretty sunset.
It was getting dark as we approached Airlie. Our friends Val and Berend had sailed their boat down to Airlie for repairs, and as we came into Airlie they were the second moored boat on the port side as we came into the marina area, and we waved, at a good distance from each other, with the flashlights of our mobile phones. It was fun and texts flew back and forth.
We both agreed that the cruise was a great way to get out and see some of this area.
We head south again tomorrow, but not too far.
Day 29 Airlie Beach to Clairview 3 August 2016 280km
After a bit of a sleep in, we were away by 7:50am heading south. We had intended to stay a couple of nights at Carmila Beach, but my concern over reports of very soft sand had us reassess our plans and we headed to Clairview instead, BarraCrab CP, just a little further down the road (30km).
On the way we drove around a little bit of Mackay and then onto Sarina, where we stopped stretched our legs and played a little Ingress. Back in the car and we drove to Clairview after a short Ingress stop in Carmila.
Clairview is right on the water, nestled in between the highway, a train line and the beach. We got a “drive-through” caravan site, which turned out not to be, but that’s the way things go sometimes. I think if we had known more we would have gone for an unpowered site and parked down right next to the beach, but we were all set up and ……….
It’s very peaceful here, with lots of birds chirping away in the trees, bright blue skies and a nice off shore SW wind. Did I say peaceful, a train just went by, it felt like it was going to go straight through the middle of our van! I hope we don’t get any late night trains, lol. 🙂
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