Whitsunday Islands

Waltzing Matilda is a beautiful 16 meter, 40 ton cruising yacht sailing the Whitsundays. She accommodates 14 guests, the skipper and a cook. As usual I was lucky having blue skies - it had poured down heavily all the way from Heron Island to Airlie Beach – a 10 hour trip with the train.

The first day we sailed to Blue Pearl Bay on Hayman Island where there is good snorkeling on the fringing reef. Plenty of fish – and unfortunately also plenty of ‘stingers’ or tiny box jelly fish whose meters long tentacles are poisonous enough to kill a human. For the couple of months the stinger season lasts, you are better off wearing a full body stinger suit when entering the water. Being used to the tame waters of Holland and Denmark, I had no idea how dangerous the sea can be. It seems like the tiniest creatures have the most poison so we are not talking sharks at all.

This batfish is very harmless, tough. Especially when you spot it from the boat.

After a full day at sea we anchored in a sheltered bay for the night, poured a glass a of wine and watched the sunset while our cook prepared dinner.

Next morning at 7 am we headed for the famous White Haven Beach on Whitsunday Island, the beach that draws 130.000 visitors a year, the beach that is depicted on the postcards.  I didn’t get the perfect shot for only one reason - one that is hard to influence – the tide. But if you haven’t been there yourself, you’ll probably find these couple of photo’s good enough. The ‘perfect’ shot  is taken at low tide when most of the sand is exposed and we got there between low and high tide.

The pristine white silica sand is so fine and white that it looks and feels like flour. Needless to say, it was not hard to spend the remainder of the morning cooling off in the crystal clear water. We had not brought any stinger suits so we stayed close to the shore … and found it slightly exciting.

Another day in a flash-packer’s life J