Life Down Under: Sailing the Whitsundays ⛵️

18th – 20th December

Kangaroos & Wallabies 🦘

I’d been tipped off by someone on my travels in Auz to go to Cape Hillsborough. You to plan it right so that you’d arrive early morning, around 5-5.30am, to catch a glimpse of the wild kangaroos and wallabies on the beach. As much as we begrudged dragging our butts out of bed before 4am to drive there, this turned out to be a great tip off and it was definitely worth it!! We had to drive carefully in the dark through Cape Hillsborough National Park to ensure we didn’t hit any roos or wallabies on the road, dawn and night time is when they’re most active and they’re pretty stupid! We parked up and walked onto the beach. Looking to the right we saw a few wallabies in and a small crowd in the distance surrounded by wallabies and roos. The light was beautiful, it was calm and (relatively) quiet, an amazing moment of our Aussie experience. We walked closer to the small group of wallabies, trying not to scare them. They moved a little down the beach then relaxed. We watched a while as they interacted with each other, then they began to play fight! By play fight I mean play box! It was amazing and so funny to watch! They would square each other up, have a little box and push the other’s head right back to an impossible position, holding it there for a few seconds. They looked just like siblings. It was so awesome!

After an impressive show we moved further along to where the small crowd were gathered, which included some National Park rangers. These roos and wallabies were a lot tamer and would allow you to get up close as the ranger would give them a bit of natural food (they must have been used to people coming to see them like celebrities!). We watched them for a while, asked a bunch of questions and got some cool pics. By the end we were also pretty convinced that the old girl roo had the hots for one of the older male tourists, she couldn’t keep away from him! 😂

TIP: This was one of the highlights of our time together in Auz, well worth doing if you get the chance! You need to get there early though!!

Set Sail!

We arrived early into Airlie Beach, so first we pulled over to check out where we needed to park and what dollarage we needed for the car park. We then went into the town to have a mooch at the cute beach and harbour and to check out all the expensive boats. It’s become a thing every time we go away and we end up at a harbour that Tom takes the time to pick out which boat he wants, you know when we’re super rich 🤣. We then went shopping for the essentials, beer and wine (yes, I put on a fair bit of weight in Australia!). We got a big crate of Great Northern lager and a couple of boxes of Sauvignon Blanc, which I thought was more up market than your average boxed wine in Australia, but nope, it’s still counts as ‘goon’ = cheap bag or box of wine 👍.

Of course being us, the greeting of our group for the sailing trip didn’t quite go smoothly, we parked up and paid, waited in the hot sun, to get told by some old dude that we were at the wrong harbour. Another girl in our group over heard and off the three of us trudged all the way to the other harbour, with our bags and boxes of heavy alcohol 🥵, to then of course discover that we had been waiting at the correct harbour after all and had to trudge all the way back! Tired, hot and sweaty, I eventually had a walk round and found the rest of the group. After the intro shizz, off we went to meet our catamaran home for the next couple of nights. The boat itself was great, modern and spacious on the deck. But then we met out sleeping quarters, which can only be described as a hole. The boat used to be a racing boat and they used to use the port holes in the outer legs of the catamaran as storage and to balance the boat during a race. Now they used them as bedrooms for tourist sailing trips, they were literally holes with no windows, no ventilation, pipes running down one side and a mattress shoved in. It was boiling in there, there was no space for bags and Tom couldn’t even stretch out fully! I was not impressed considering the amount we’d paid for the trip! He lucky people who got a bed in the middle had way more space but didn’t get a ‘private room’ like us (which is how they sold it 😂). Oh well, we tried to make the most of it!

We set sail off to the waters around the Whitsunday Islands – they are part of the Great Barrier Reef and holds the famous Hamilton Beach, one of the most photographed beaches in the world due to its crystal clear waters and amazing white sand. It took a couple of hours to get out to the waters around the islands, as the boat sailed on we quickly discovered how easy it was to lose possessions due to them flying off the boat, either from the wind or falling through the large gap between the main structure of the boat and the netting we sat on. By the end of the trip unfortunately there would have been some well some creamed up sharks, fish & turtles wearing sunglasses and caps 😬.

We had some lunch on the way (another tricky balance trying to hold plates and cups without them disappearing into the ocean) then stopped to go snorkelling! This perked Tom and I up (we were a little grumpy after the ‘whole hole’ debacle and Tom realising that there was no shade on the boat and it’s over 30 degrees C), we both love snorkelling and searching for different fishies 😄. Off we jumped with the Go Pro and had a great time! After snorkelling we stopped at Border Island and walked to the top to soak up some amazing views.

As the night drew in we caught a glimpse of an orange sunset before having dinner and a couple of beers and watching the stars come out. Having still not made friends with the hole, I ended up sleeping on deck with a few other people. It was just about warm enough with the sheet, however, it briefly started chucking it down in the middle of the night and us deck sleepers had to retreat our holes and close the lid. Feeling like I was in a coffin, the second rain stopped I jumped back out and attempted to sleep back up on deck. It was an interesting experience, sufficed to say I didn’t a lot of sleep. Somehow Tom managed to cook nicely all night in the hole 🤔.

Hamilton Beach

We had all kept our fingers crossed for good weather the second morning, as this was our slot for visiting Hamilton Beach. Not quite postcard picture perfect, a dark stormy sky set in for most of the morning. We first hiked to a view point to look over the beach and hear some info from the guides. We then headed down to the beach, we didn’t get the perfect pics that would make everyone back home jealous, but we did get some different, moody pictures, plus we still got to see lemon sharks and sting rays! We had great time following them with the Go Pro! Sunbathing was a little chilly and ended up pretty wet, at that point we were happy to get back on the boat.

A Sunny Afternoon and Pretty Sunset

Of course the sun came out all afternoon 🙄. We had some lunch as we sailed off to the next spot. When we reached it, we went off to do some more snorkelling, this time there were some real big fish! The guys on the boat threw out some food and it was like a crazy frenzy! They were going mad zipping about everywhere. They would keep purposefully throwing feed really close to each of us so a crazy huge fish would come hurtling towards us looking like an attack, it was so cool!

We chilled for the afternoon in the sun and into the evening. We all had a few drinks and they brought out pre dinner snack of veg & other bits with hummus. We all got chatting to each other a bit more, the group was ok, some more our kinda people than others. We had dinner later on and a few more drinks as the sun went down and the stars came out, the stars were pretty cool out there with less light pollution. Once again I slept on deck and once again it rained in the night, but only a little and I wasn’t in the hole for long.