Wild Places and Open Spaces

After another successful platypus sighting in the morning at Wallaman Falls National Park, we headed towards Arlie beach to find out about the Whitsunday Islands. The Whitsundays are a group of islands off the coast with the inner barrier reef (as opposed to the outer barrier reef) all around them. The largest of the group is Whitsunday Island, and is known for its numerous white sand beaches – all the trael magazines have pictures of this beautiful place.

We booked on to a sailboat – the Matador – for 3 days, 2 nights. Because we were a last minute booking, we saved $200. See, it pays to have no plans! Spent the night at a campground and did laundry so we could jump on the boat the next day.

The Matador is a maxi sailboat – a very fast sailboat and in her day was a #1 racer. She won the Sydney to Hobart race one year, the maxi world championship in 90-91 under the name “Fudge”, and many other prestigious races.

Jim and I dove again off the boat, saw some great coral and sme neat creatures. Unfortunately there was not much wind, so down came the sails fairly soon and we motored to Whitsunday Island. Jim and I had opted to camp on shore – and all the people on the boat were quite envious as the quarters below were quite….cozy, shall we say!

We were surprised when we walked ashore on the beach…the sand actually squeaks when one walks. The sand is very high in silica content – as a matter of fact some of it was used to make the Hubble telescope. All of the camping equipment was supplied…it was luxury camping with a 4 man tent for just the 2 of us with a blow up mattress! Upon visiting the outhouse, we came upon our very first huntsman spider – an ENORMOUS thing and hairy with very large jaws that he was using to devour a cockroach. Wow. Needless to say we didn’t get too close, and instead used the handy dandy zoom lens to get our photo.

The night on the beach was wonderful. Clear skies with what seemed to be millions of stars. We slept listening to the waves lap the shores and to the occassional rat scurrying around the tent.

Next morning the sailboat anchored so we could all explore the other side of Whitsunday island. We walked to a lookout that is famous for its view – it truly was breathtaking how beautiful the sand, water and islands looked. When anyone pictures paradise, I am sure this is the vision that comes to mind.

We spent the day hiking, boating, snorkelling, and sunning – life doesn’t get much better than this. At night we had some drinks and played reverse charades with the crew and passengers – quite funny and fun. Our camping experience was not as private this night, as we had 4 more campers on the island with us…they were having trouble sleeping in the cramped quarters with the snorers.

The wind picked up tremendously overnight, and in the morning we were informed by Greg, a crew member that slept on the beach as well, that we would have to go give him a hand with the dingy….the dingy had broken off from the sailboat overnight due to the heavy winds, and had come ashore and was full of water. Luckily the wind had been blowing in our direction, or else the dingy would have been off in the middle of the sea somewhere, and we would have been stranded – quite an embarrassing situation for the crew I am sure. Anyways, we managed to get off the island – albeit soaked from the rough waters – and started yet another great day. Due to the high winds, we actually got to sail…..and I mean really sail. This boat rips through the water – it was fantastic. Jim and I sat up front on deck and the waves crashed over us as we flew through the water. It truly was an amazing experience. Probably the best part of the trip however was the people on board. The crew and the passengers (a total of 30 people) were terrific – we were lucky to have such a great group. We went out last night for drinks with them and had a really fun time. Today one of the crew members is having a barbeque at his house for us all to stop by. We will do so, but then must be on our way. Our next stop will be Uluru, and I am sure we will have many adventures on our way there through the outback!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.