Whitsunday Island is hailed by the Lonely Planet as: “Food for the soul.” It’s enduring image Whitehaven Beach, stretching over six kilometers of pristine white sands, is described as the longest and “finest” beach in Australia. This was the destination of today’s excursion.

Accompanied by a potentially annoying gaggle of other tourists we boarded a boat called Reefjet sailed via the East Australian Current (the same current Nemo’s dad and the turtles travel in the film ‘Finding Nemo’) to Whitsunday Island.

The boat first stopped at Hill Inlet and in small groups we were loaded into a smaller boat and ferried across to the island for a short walk up to a viewing platform over Tongue Point and the immaculate white sands of the celebrated Whitehaven Beach.

Whitehaven beach is an iconic image of Australia and has been used in a number of advertisements including the infamous one for Aussie tourism that was banned in the UK because a pretty girl strolling along Whitehaven beach uttered the words: “So where the bloody hell are you!”

From the top of Hill Inlet the view was spectacular. The blue, green, white water lapped invitingly against perfect white sand, as the water flowed into the inlet the blues and greens made swirls in the ocean – simply amazing – we didn’t have nearly long enough to enjoy the view before being Shepparded back to the boat.

Once back aboard the boat we sailed around to Whitehaven Beach where we had some time to relax and explore the beautiful coast line. The dazzling sand is 98 per cent silica, incredibly fine but soooo soft (apparently very good for exfoliating and cleaning your teeth!). I spent some time enjoying my surroundings and taking some pictures before the boat left as lunch was served.

The last stop of the day was snorkeling at Boulder Island ‘Pitstop’. I was underwhelmed by the whole experience. The majority of what I swam over was grey dead coral uninhabited by fish of any kind. Most of those I did see were bland in colour and fairly uninteresting. When I did eventually find some brightly coloured coral with fish inhabitants there weren’t many of them and they were a long way below us snorkelers. It was fun but Emily and I had definitely been spoilt when snorkeling in the Philippines because this didn’t even come close.

Snorkeling over we headed back to Airley beach for an early night ready for another long day tomorrow.

* Posted by j150vsc on 23/12/2007.