The Whitsundays are a group of 22 islands (and part of a wider group of 74) off the Queensland coast. Some of them are quite large and have permanent residents and/or resorts, some are fairly small. They have a reputation as being a real highlight of Australia. I'm not sure I see it. They are scenic, but we've been spoiled by Halong Bay and various other bits of coast. And I had a mental picture of them being all tropical sand and beaches, whereas they're mostly rocks and greenery. The most famous beach, Whitehaven, is a long, gentle, narrow curve of very pure sand (nearly 99% silica, which is apparently how you measure purity, at least if you like to big up your local Whitsunday beach), which is nice enough - and hard enough to make for good beach cricket - but nothing unique.
Access is via Airlie Beach, a little town with hardly any beach to speak of but a very nice, big, free outdoor pool to swim in or lounge around. I suspect if you roll up here - or even down in Hervey Bay near Fraser Island - you can pick from dozens if not hundreds of ocean-going tours and get a decent last-minute discount.
We took a 2-night cruise on the British Defender, a 44-foot maxiyacht - a former racing ship that has completed a round-the-world race and won a couple over shorter distances. The good thing about this is that we did a bit of fairly serious sailing, with the boat tipping over at angles of up to about 55 degrees to sail into the wind (yes, really - apparently it can go as far as 110 degrees without capsizing, and yes, that does mean its mast would be underwater). The downside of this is that the novelty of clinging on to one side of the boat and being splashed wears off after a while. And although it's been refitted, it's not designed for comfort - the bunks are hot at night and not for the claustrophobic.
But I think the biggest shame is that we didn't really get to grips with the Whitsundays. We did sail right around the group, but saw most of it at a distance - we only landed once, and came up close to one island to snorkel. The first and third day were taken up with going from A to B (3 to 4 hours sailing/motoring), so only the middle day had any 'activities'.
Quite enjoyed my first time snorkelling - the worst things about swimming for me are my breathing and getting water up my nose, and snorkelling generally helps with these, particular if you borrow a little aide de flotation. It's not the best of conditions because last week's cyclone has stirred everything up a lot and visibility is fairly poor (a few guys went scuba diving and said they couldn't see more than a metre), but when you lie still and drift, your eyes quickly adjust and the fish swim up. This is on the fringing reef, a mere 4 million years old, so there's also some interesting coral formations. We saw quite a lot of various colourful and zebra-striped fish and, on a second trip, a brief glimpse of a 4-foot-long fish which fortunately does not try to eat people. (A much smaller fish tried to eat Lilly's finger. It didn't get very far.) We had to wear stinger suits - basically wetsuits - in case of jellyfish, which as a bonus make the sea feel pretty warm.
We had a fairly full range of weather, but the rain came at good times - i.e. times we could go below deck or pull the covers on - and didn't quite get sunburned when the sun came out, though we are both a fair bit darker than we were a week ago!
So: we enjoyed the Whitsundays well enough, but didn't see anything to make them a must-visit, unfortunately.
That's pretty much it for us and Australia - flying back to Sydney today and around the world in the morning. In many ways it's exceeded expectations. The major cities are far more interesting than I'd expected, most of nature lived up to expectations and there were some good surprises (such as Kings Canyon). Rather than being eaten by exotic creatures, they were mostly a pleasant backdrop. We've only dipped our toes in the traditional backpackers' route up the east coast, so take this with a pinch of salt, but it does seem to be mainly jumping-off points for islands and aquatic adventures, and the small towns we've seen have limited charm in their own right. We spent 2 nights and about 2.5 days in Airlie Beach, which felt like a very long time. I guess my tip is to keep on moving... That's what we're going to do. I'd come back... But I'll wait until the exchange rate gets a lot better.
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