The Whitsundays

From Sydney, we flew north about 2000 km to the Whitsundays Coast Airport. Our destination was Airlie Beach. It's a small touristy town with a population of about 4000 people.

We stayed in these awesome apartments (the Sea Star Apartments -- I highly recommend them in case anyone else heads to Airlie Beach) some distance up the big hill in the city. It was a bit of a climb to get to our place, but the cool breezes and gorgeous views were well worth the view. There was this flock of white birds (they looked like parrots to me) that would fly onto our balcony and look for handouts. My dad is a sucker and would feed them bread. They would hold a piece of bread with one foot and eat it. He kept talking about how his new children were missing him while we were out. We called him "Papa Papuga" (Polish for "Papa Parrot"). He would call the parrots "moje dzieci" (Polish for "my children"). Being his real children, my sister and I were a bit alarmed by his new avian brood. Would he remember us in his will, or would these feathered interlopers sabotage our inheritance?!

Airlie Beach is located in the tropics and the weather was hot and humid. The temperature was bearable, however, when the sun showed up, you could feel it radiating heat directly into your skin. It was soooo nice -- much nicer than the feeble sun that we get in Canada during the winter months. I needed it so much.

It rained every day that we were there, however the rain would last only a few minutes. The rain wasn't really a bother in any way (unlike it was in Sydney).

We were in Airlie Beach to see two main things: the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday Islands.

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is a reef along the eastern coast of Australia. It's two thousand kilometers long. You can see it from outer space. It's one of the single most amazing places on the planet Earth.

We took a day trip out to the GBR -- in particular, we went to Hardy Reef. The GBR is not one single reef, but instead a long chain of individual reefs. The boat took about three hours to get there since it stopped at two other islands along the way to pick up people. The sea was fairly rough that day, and I actually got seasick on the way there. Ugh. Yak. Bleck. Right.

The reef is far enough into the sea that you can't see any land from there. The catamaran docked at a manmade platform called Reefworld. It was a good base for snorkeling. I was excited to go snorkeling! I had never tried it before! I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to see anything. I expected my glasses to either fog up under the mask, or I wouldn't be able to wear them at all. My eyes suck really hard (my prescription is about -7.0), so I was pretty worried about this. However, I lucked out, since they had optic goggles to use. Even though the strongest ones they had were a mere -6.0, it was close enough to be useful.

The current was strong, and I'm not a great swimmer, so I was careful at first. They had ropes set up on buoys around the reef for people to pull themselves along, so I was able to get around that way until I gained some confidence. After a while, though, I roamed around with more freedom and saw more of the reef. I saw many schools of various colourful fish. Many of the fish would swim right up to you and check you out. They weren't scared of people at all. I also saw lots of corals, giant clams, and a sea turtle. The turtle swam along slowly, fins flapping lazily, without a care in the world. It was an experience I'll never forget.

I didn't have an underwater camera, so I couldn't take any pictures in the water. However, we got to ride in a semi-submersible boat, and I got to take some pictures of the corals that way.

The waters were filled with jellyfish, too. Some of them, like the infamous Irukandji, had a sting that could easily incapacitate or seriously harm a human. Even though these jellies were tiny, they were still a very serious danger. We could only swim in the water while wearing a protective lycra swimming suit to protect us.

The Whitsundays are an archipelago or 74 islands just off the coast of Australia. They're located between the mainland and the GBR. Most of the islands are designated as national parks. However, a few of them are set aside as resort communities. Our second day trip from Airlie Beach was to the Whitsundays -- specifically to a pretty special beach.

Our daytrip took us to three islands. The first was Daydream Island. This island was a pretty small one with only one resort on it. We saw a kangaroo there! It was hippety hopping along the beach all by itself. We roamed around the pool area, a chapel, and the minigolf course. We got some fun pictures at the minigolf course, but it was pretty boring overall. It's a good thing that we were only there for about one hour.

The second island was Hamilton Island. This island was pretty awesome. Apparently, it's the largest resort in the South Pacific. Jet airplanes fly directly to it from many places all over Australia. It would have been nice to stay there, but it's way more expensive to fly to, or stay in, than Airlie Beach on the mainland. There's a few resorts there, but we only saw one of them. It was pretty freaking beautiful. The pool and the beaches there were gorgeous. They had ski kayaking there. I wanted to try it, but we didn't have time. We walked around the shops a bit and got some ice cream.

We were only there for about an hour and a half before we departed again for the third island: Whitsunday Island. This island had the fantastic Whitehaven Beach: seven kilometers of the softest and whitest sand anywhere. The beach is part of a national park. The only way to get there is by boat, helicopter, or seaplane. There were very few people there. It was fantastic.

We were there for about two and a half hours. We went swimming (again, with the protection of stinger suits) and sat in the sun. My sister was there to work on her tan. It lightly rained briefly, but, we were already wearing bathing suits, so it was no big deal. We walked along the beach and counted the dead jellyfish washed up on the beach. My sister took a ten minute walk and counted fifty of them in one short stretch of beach.

After getting back to town we decided we'd go to a pub for dinner. We got some two-for-one pizza and a few jugs of beer at an outdoors backpacker pub. For the past few days we had prepared dinner on our own at our apartment, so it was nice to get out. Since Airlie Beach had so many backpackers, there was a fun party vibe going on.

On our last day in Airlie Beach we went swimming in town's super lagoon. It's really just a big swimming pool, but it was still pretty nice because there were no jellies nor saltwater to worry about. I swam for a couple of hours. It was the only real exercise I had for about a week, so I tried to make the most of it.

We didn't get to stay there very long though, since we had to get to the airport to catch the plane so we could fly to our next location in Australia: Noosa.

--
Rob Szumlakowski
Noosa, Australia