Credit the sun, the sea, the sand or all three. Since the low cost aviation revolution came to Australia (with the help of some Irish ex-pats) they are coming to the Whitsundays i n ever spiralling numbers. Some of the most popular and luxurious tourist resorts in all of Australia are those found on seven of the 74 islands of the Whitsundays.
Hayman has a huge pool which looks like an eighteenth century regal garden from Europe except in blue, and bedrooms flanking each side where you can emerge blinking into the morning tropical sun.
It all seems too good to be real, and that’s before you hit the fine dining experience and the evenings sipping Australian sparkling wine, like champagne only cheaper.
The arrival and departure point for the islands on low cost airline Jetstar, Hamilton Island has been chosen to replicate the Caribbean for the upcoming movie Fools Gold, starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey.
Hamilton Island is where most of the action is, with a new spa and high end resort, Qualia, due to open in August.
Each day holiday makers are presented with dozens of options for activities, including a hang gliding flying fox where you swoop down in to the valley and a nerve jangling speed boat ride across the bay and in to the mangrove swamps.
It is the location for famous yacht and outrigging races, and most weekends the harbour is filled with kayakers, boaters and jet skiers.
Unsurprisingly, Daydream Island, the island closest to the mainland coast, is an invented name, thought up by third generation Irish Australian Paddy Murray and his wife Connie, who established the resort in 1932, close enough to the mainland to be supplied with power and water.
Daydream indeed. It used to be called West Molle, the Murrays set it up as a stopping point for passing cruise ships and, through cyclones, wars, bankruptcy and the addition of a $70m spa in 2004, it has retained its place in the popular imagination.
These islands were home to groups of fishermen and Ngaro forest hunters when Captain Cook sailed through on the Endeavour, passing Daydream on Whitsunday June 3 1770, and beaching briefly on one of the islands that still bear the date of their first encounter with England.
Terence Connell, a Kerryman who is to this coast what Seán Ó Dhúibhir a Ghleanna was to Aherlows, escaped from Port Jackson in 1792 and journeyed up the channel, stopping on Shaw Island for a well-earned sunbathe before eventually settling down in New Guinea.
Along the way he inadvertently discovering the sea route between the coast and the barrier reef which was to serve modern yachtsmen so well.
Daydream has had a sequence of owners who liked to write up its appeal. In the 1920s Henry G Llamond’s stories, My Island Home, brought the island to the notice of city dwellers in Sydney. A Sydney poet of the 1930s, Mabel Forrest came to see for herself: “Here is the home of peace and here the strife of cities is forgotten and man finds again the faiths he lost in crowded ways.” Owner Connie Murray declared: “I feel the joy that comes to one who has found the untrodden ways. To visit Daydream Island was to be heart comforted. From palest turquoise in deepest amethyst, the sea changes hourly.”
The poetry continues today on Daydream, small, walkable and crowded with activities such as the daily fish feed with a trained marine biologist. The sound of the Barramundi sucking their tit bits fills the air like a rush of wind.
The real wind will take you to your next destination here. By sailboat. These waves have sailboat written on them. Oz Sailing adventures will bring you to some favourite berthing points, to silent aboriginal caves, the lookout at Tongue Island, or Whitehaven Beach, rated as one of the most beautiful in the world.
The beach at the end of the world is worth the journey.
The Barrier reef scuba dive is another one of those breath-taking experience, probably the breath-taking experience which you hope you have enough breath for.
You put your head under the gentle lapping sea water. You, breathe in (it hisses). You breathe out (it bubbles). You step off the platform to find out if it is all as amazing as it looked in those Jacques Cousteau documentaries.
And you hope it won’t take your breath away.
A big groper fish comes by, pop-eyed to investigate. Clams wave at you from the sea floor. You descend the wall of the reef and look at the eyes, mouths, gills, spores and tentacles that protrude from every hole. There is something primal about diving, the sense that the sights you see down there will never be appreciated by someone who has never done it. And there is that constant soundtrack, like a silent movie orchestral score, breathing in, bubbling out, your heart pounding somewhere in the background with the excitement of it all. It is not clear how that patch of distant coral reef has managed to take such command of our imagination. People mention Australia in any given conversation and the talk soon gets submersed in blue and bubbly water.
Wally the fish? If you haven’t had your photograph taken with him you haven’t been “down under”, in the literal, metaphorical or imaginative sense.
People who get queasy watching their rubber duck in the bath spend a fortune and travel to the other side of the world to see the Barrier reef.
The rest of Australia, all those beaches and red desert and iron bridges and Vegemite is a hundred kilometres to the east but it doesn’t matter.
Out here in the Pacific you find a world of its own, one that has pushed its way into our global popular culture, half underwater, half over water, and a bit of it skywards – the only organism visible from outer space.
Don’t believe the English when they say a Geordie was the first to amble through these parts. Long before Captain Cook, Portuguese sailor Christovao de Mendonca and Admiral Cheng Ho, the seven foot tall Chinese eunuch who sailed south from Malacca had both had a look.
Europeans and Asians have been coming back since and can’t get enough of the place.
The Barrier Reef is the star of the show when they talk about tourism in Australia, 100k from the mainland, three hours from Hamilton and an hour and a half from Hayman Island, itself the luxury resort star of the Whitsunday islands.
Just barely. Sometimes the Aussies try to outperform the landscape, and remind you what it is about this sub-contenent that is so facinating, the inhabitants.
On the boat back in our host declared: “I’d now like to point out the islands: there’s one to the left, one to the right, and another one straight ahead of us .”
You had to have been there.
- Take time to get a PADI certification H20 Sportz and do some more serious dives or head out on a fully organised tour for a spot of eye-popping snorkelling.
- Charter a yacht for a few days or simply learn to sail. Oz Adventure Sailing has sailing options 1300 653 100 www.ozsail.com.au
- Take the bushwalk to Escape beach.
- Explore the Great Barrier Reef with ease with Whitsunday Cruises. The cruises depart Hamilton Island marina daily. Or you can learn about the local fringing reef with a snorkelling excursion on Catseye Beach great for the kids.
- Get romantic with a scenic Hamilton Island aviation helicopter flight to Whitehaven Beach, where you and your beloved can enjoy an intimate afternoon champagne picnic.
- Eoghan Corry flew to Brisbane with Qantas via Heathrow with Aer Lingus.
- There are direct flights to Hamilton from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Cairns and Adelaide.
- Whitsunday Cruises will pick you up from the mainland, Daydream or Hayman Islands Adults $180, diving is extra. A helicopter ride is $129 for ten minutes, $199 for twenty minutes. www.cruisewhitsundays.com +677 4946 4662
- Accommodation ranges from three to five star hotels to self-catering properties. For the best views, book into a Coral Sea View room in the Reef View Hotel, from $320 per night, or enjoy a two bedroom terrace suite for $910 per night (one or two adults for a four night stay includes breakfast, transfers, non motorised water sports and aces to Kids Stay and Eat free – conditions apply).
- www.hamiltonisland.com.au Hamilton Island +677 4946 9999
- www.daydreamisland.com +67 749488488
- www.hayman.com.au +677 4940 1234
