Whitsunday Islands

The morning sunrise at WhiteHaven Beach.

The pure silica sand of WhiteHaven Beach.

Solway Lass.

A bush walk to the bay on the other side.

Ready to go in the water dressed in a stinger suit.

Some of the reef.

A gigantic Queensland groper, about two metres long and over  200kg.

Wednesday, July 6^th

Woke up early with everyone else. Got up on deck in time to watch the sunrise. We anchored last night at WhiteHaven Beach rated one of the best beaches in the world. Now we could see it in the light and have a look around the ship. There were a lot of private or hired boats anchored here too.

We had breakfast of cereal, toast, yogurt, and fruit and then we got a lesson on the rules of the boat, going in the water and snorkeling. We must wear stinger suits otherwise our insurance companies won't cover us. They are basically a thin wet suit. I asked how come they didn't cover the feet hands or head.... They didn't have an answer for that.

Then we boarded the little skiff in groups of 12 to get to the beach. The sand is the finest pure silica sand in the world. It is white and comes from an underwater volcano full of white quartz. When we got to the beach Steve took 15 of us on a 7km bushwalk to a lookout over Whitehaven and to Chance Bay beach on the other side of the peninsula where there was no one. The sand here was more normal but it was still a beautiful beach. When we got back we hung around on the beach for an hour sunning before going back to the boat for lunch which was a sausage and salad bbq.

After lunch we motored to Chalkie's Beach where we offloaded for a couple of hours of snorkeling. The water was a bit murky but the corals looked pretty good although there were not too many fish but I did see a couple of jellyfish! I snorkeled for a while and then sunned on the beach.

After dinner Lance gave us a lecture about the really interesting history of the Solway Lass which was built in 1902 and survived both world wars and was sunk twice and once had a captain die in the engine room overcome by fumes whereupon his crew abandoned ship and it float around for two years. Eventually in the 1980's a company bought it refitted it and made it what it is today a tourist vessel.

After that Scottie showed us what they sell for merchandise. Towards the end of the this I was standing by the rail and happened to turn around and look at the water. The crew had the dolphin light on to attract small fish that a dolphin might come to eat. But what I saw was a huge fish. I said “There is a really big fish over here” and Scottie said you can go look at the fish in a minute (he wanted to finish his presentation and thought I was just talking about regular big fish) but I knew this was something extraordinary. So I said “No there is a really big fish over here” and a bunch of people came to look including the crew. Everyone was amazed. What it was was a Queensland Giant Groper. It is the largest boney fish on the reef. It eats everything including small sharks. It is very curious/and aggressive and will confront divers. Lindsay for one said he wouldn't go anywhere near it. It was at least two metres long and really thick. Lindsay estimated it at 200 kilos. It has a huge mouth and its head is one third of its body length. He hung around just at the surface by the boat for a couple of hours. The crew fed him a couple of fish heads which he inhaled and then, because they had nothing else they tossed him an egg. It too disappeared but was spat out again whole. Obviously not to his taste.

We all sat and talked for a while. Eventually I went to bed to read for a bit and promptly fell asleep.