Monday we drove into Prosperine to check out what boat trips we can do around the Whitsunday Islands. As you can imagine there are a lot and we opted for a one day trip on an ocean raft (see details later)) the following day. There are a total of 74 islands in total, some are well developed for tourism and a lot that are still pristine without infrastructure. The trip we are going on does more snorkelling than other trips and visits Whitehaven Beach which is an icon on the Whitsundays. We wanted to do snorkelling to see how it compares to Ningaloo Reef in WA. The ocean raft takes half the travel time of the bigger boats and holds 25 passengers compared to the 80 plus that others do. After our trip to Prosperine, John went to the lagoon to try fishing with the tide coming in. Apparently crocodiles have been seen around the lagoon and even further out on the islands! Tuesday we wake up early to get ready for our boat trip and it was really foggy outside but once the sun shone its head through it cleared quickly into a beautiful day. We drove to Airlie Beach which is the launching spot for most boat trips to the Whitsundays. Airlie Beach is a really nice area with a Mediterranean feel with houses sitting on the side of a hill overlooking the water which was stunning. Looks like we have chosen a good calm sunny day for our trip. The vessel we were travelling on are ocean rafts that were originally designed and built as rescue crafts and are driven by 2, 225hp engines. There was not a lot of room with all 25 of us being squeezed on.(John said there were 28!) At the first opportunity the skipper gave us a demonstration of how manoeuvreable and fast the rafts could go which meant going fast and turning quickly – think he enjoyed it more than some of the passengers. We were travelling 50 minutes to get to our first stop which was Whitehaven Beach. Along the way we stopped at Daydream Island to pick up two more people (yes they got squished in). Daydream Island is not the daydream you might think it is with a brown sandy beach (well what bit we saw anyway). Finally we get to our first stop but not without some more showing off and fast driving. Whitehaven Beach is in the Whitsundays Islands National Park and the sand sure is white and is quite lovely after the beaches we have seen since the Gold Coast. We did a bush walk to Hill Inlet lookout where we got a great view over Whitehaven Beach. Whitehaven Beach is the fourth most photographed place in Australia after the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Opera House and Uluru. The Tom Hanks movie Castaway was filmed here. It is quite spectacular and we couldn’t have had a better day for taking photos. After our walk back down we ate lunch on the beach. The sand is the same as Esperance in that it squeaks when you walk on it. The whiteness is due to the amount of silica in it. After lunch we had plenty of time to relax before we get back on the boat to do our two snorkels at Hook Island. On the way there, we almost ran into a humpback whale mother and her calf they were so close – it was fantastic. Unfortunately we weren’t quick enough with the camera and missed a fantastic photo opportunity. The sad thing the skipper told us is that they are seeing less and less whales due to the Japanese whaling. We also saw a turtle. Our first snorkel was at Mantaray Bay. We had our own snorkelling gear but were asked not to use our fins due to the damage they can cause to the reef and as it turned out we didn’t need them, the water was calm and we didn’t have to swim too far. The Whitsundays Islands National Park wants to ban the use of fins which would be a good idea as they can do a lot of damage by novice snorkellers/divers. The water was cold even with our 3/4 wetsuits but the fish life was superb. We saw many large schools of different fish and the coral was quite colourful and plentiful. It was a great snorkel with the visibility at about 10-15 metres, not the best but still good. On the way back to the boat we saw two enormous lumphead wrasse. They would have been over one metre long – have never seen fish so big – quite magnificent! Our next spot was literally around the corner at Butterfly Cove – this one was more coral – nice but not so colourful and very few fish. After this snorkel we headed home.
It was a great day however we both agreed that we have all of this and much more in WA, we might be biased but you cannot beat Ningaloo for snorkelling and diving, Exmouth and Esperance for their beautiful white sand beaches and WA in general has the best expanse of beautiful beaches we have seen by far! Rottnest island might not have neighbouring islands like the Whitsundays but it is definitely in the same league. The great thing about WA is that you don’t have to get on a boat for 50 minutes or longer to see any of this we have it right there on our shores! Makes us appreciate how lucky we are in WA.
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