The Whitsundays, Australia: Sailing, swimming and snorkelling in paradise
- Esther
- Jul 29, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 2, 2020
The Whitsundays were one of the things I was most excited about seeing on the East Coast - and they were still even better than I thought they'd be!
We arrived on Tuesday on Airlie Beach, which is a town where people mostly stay just because it’s the gateway to the Whitsundays and resort islands like Daydream and Hamilton Island. I actually really liked it, though, because the lagoon (a big manmade pool that they make to stop people swimming in the sea in areas where it’s too dangerous) was bigger and nicer than the one in Cairns and there was a lot more going on in town than some of the other places we’ve been in Queensland.
The day we arrived, it was actually Ben’s birthday, so we celebrated by getting the ferry straight from Airlie over to Hamilton Island; a resort island which a few people in Sydney had told us was amazing.
We didn’t have enough time to explore everything on Hamilton but I loved the pool and its swim-up bar (that did amazing piña coladas!), the really nice restaurants and the private white sand beach. It was definitely much more of a holiday place for people with money than a backpacker spot but it was really fun to spend a day there in the sun.
The Whitsundays Cruise
On Thursday, we started the main part of our time in the Whitsundays; a cruise for two days and two nights around the Whitsunday Islands. We’d booked this right at the start of the trip (because it was one of the big things we wanted to do) through a company called PowerPlay, which turned out to be a great choice because we had a really nice, fun group of people on the boat with us.
The boat itself was also really great. It was a bit of a squeeze sleeping twenty people in there but it had a nice big deck with a jacuzzi (!) and the beds were actually really comfortable. The food that the crew made every meal time was also amazing!
On the afternoon we arrived, we spent some time chatting and sunbathing on the deck while sailing to Whitehaven Beach. When we got there, we did the sunset walk up to Hill Inlet to see the famous view over Whitehaven Beach with its blue and white sandy swirls.
The view was great that evening, but it was even better when we went back the next morning because the tide was low and even more of the sand was popping out of the bright turquoise water. It looked like paradise!
From the viewpoint, we then walked down to the beach itself, where the sand looked like icing sugar and the water was so crystal clear we could see sting rays and a baby shark (which were all completely harmless) swimming around our feet.
After leaving the beach, our captain, Waz, took us to some of the best snorkelling points in the Whitsundays.
At the first one, there was a crazy amount of fish. This was partly because Waz started feeding them from his speedboat so that they would all swarm our group. As well as lots of smaller brightly coloured fish, we saw a few enormous ones as well, which were actually much bigger than the ones we’d seen at the Great Barrier Reef!
At the second snorkelling point, we saw a lot of different types of coral - which were a mixture of beautiful and alien-looking - and some anemones with Nemos (clownfish) inside them.
On the way to snorkelling, we were happy to have our sunbathing interrupted by seeing a whale and her baby swimming next to the boat. They burst out of the water a couple of times (which is called breaching), which was amazing, and popped their tails and dorsal fins out of the sea next to us a few times too.
About half an hour later, we got extra lucky because we saw a giant sea turtle popping out of the water while swimming as well. I didn’t realise how big they could be!
After we’d finished snorkelling and dried off with our hot drinks, we got a chance to paddleboard in the ocean. Standing up on the boards was actually a lot harder than it looked, but some of our group had pretty impressive balance on them (unfortunately not me or Ben).
We then all sat on the boat while the sunset drinking our ciders and goon (Australia’s most popular, cheap and kind of gross bagged wine) and playing cards and drinking games. Once the hot tub heated up, we found out ten of us could fit our feet in it at once, so we ended up spending most of the night around there!
Both evenings, Waz turned on a blue light at the front of the boat which lit up all the sea life. We saw the Queensland Groper there – an enormous blue fish which apparently weighs about half a car - and also saw Waz catch about fifteen squid to make into calamari the next day.
All in all, the Whitsundays were one of the best things I’ve seen on this trip so far (which I’m somehow already nearly halfway through) and I think anyone travelling the East Coast should go and see them!
Afterwards, we went back to Airlie Beach to relax for a bit before catching the overnight bus to Noosa. I’m now twelve hours into the seventeen hour journey (the one bad thing about travelling such a big country!) and looking forward to arriving in our next destination; Noosa.
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