Whitsundays
“Go out, go out I beg of you. And taste the beauty of the wild. Behold the miracle of the earth. With all the wonder of a child.”
— Edna Jaques
What started as a mistake turned into one of the most memorable parts of my entire Australian trip, right up there with Fraser Island. The boat I’d originally booked had broken its rudder, and I was dying to get back into the water for some more diving. Luckily, the Internet café across from my caravan park saved the day. I found a day trip aboard the Whitehaven Express and suddenly my ruined plans didn’t seem so ruined after all.
The Whitsundays were worth every penny. It’s MAGICAL!!! People looking at these pictures later thought I’d somehow “Adobe beautified” them. Nope. That’s what it actually looked like. After hiking to the lookout, I couldn’t believe the view — brilliant white sand swirling through impossibly blue and turquoise water. Of the more than 2,500 digital pictures I took during this Australian adventure, only about 500 eventually made it onto the website. I sometimes think I could have taken all 2,500 right here and on Fraser Island.
Whitehaven Beach was almost ridiculously beautiful, with its incredibly fine, silica-rich sand looking as white as snow. We reached the beach from the larger boat and then spent the rest of the day exploring, snorkelling and diving. The water was clear, the marine life was everywhere and there were plenty of reef sharks to keep things interesting. My only real regret was that I couldn’t simply stay in the Whitsundays forever. Unfortunately, like the goannas going after our BBQ, I eventually had to eat too.
One memory still makes my belly hurt from laughing. Sam, one of the crew aboard the Whitehaven Express, was nearby when I noticed a large, strange, orange translucent spider crawling across our picnic table. “What the hell is that?” I yelped. Sam looked at it and calmly replied, “Not sure, but it’ll probably kill ya.” By this stage of the trip, that seemed like a perfectly reasonable Australian answer.
