Great Barrier Reef

We are back from our winter holiday with our nephew, Taylor, and our friends, David and Joann Johnston, and are going to spread around the blog writing duties. My task is to write about the final destination of our northward journey , the small town of Airlie Beach and our activities there. It's located on the east coast, north of Mackay and south of Townsville if you're looking at a map that only shows the bigger cities. It is on the mainland and is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef . We spent 5 nights in a very nice 3 bedroom condo with a great view of the harbor and of the nightly sunset. We didn't spend much time in the condo as we were out on the water for most of the 4 days.

On our first day, after that looooong 10 hour drive to get there, we just relaxed by the town's massive lagoon. The beach at Airlie Beach is ironically not any good, so they built this saltwater/chlorine treated 250 meter by 40 meter "pool". It's the size of a small lake. It overlooks the actual beach and has the best real estate position in town. The town has several backpacker hostels and was full of their young temporary residents, so Taylor enjoyed scouting out all the young females lounging around the lagoon sleeping off their hangovers. We had a nice chicken and pineapple barbecue at the lagoon that night and got nice and relaxed for our next three days of "excursions".


Excursion 1 was an all day power boat trip out to the 'outer reef' for snorkeling with 160 of our closest friends. My experience is that the bigger the tour the worse it will be.....We had great weather and pretty calm seas for the 3 hour 105 kilometer trip out there. We were told a few times that we should really get to the 'outer reef' for the best views of the reef and for snorkeling. We enjoyed our day very much, but were of the opinion 2 days later that we really didn't need to go out there after all. The coral and fish were as good or better during our next two days. The boat trip was nice, but it was 6 hours round trip and we had only about 3 hours to spend at the reef. The water was a bit rough and that made it harder to snorkle for all of us. The reef near the companies semi-permanent pontoon is is roped off to for protection. That didn't allow us the access we desired.







The next day we took a guided kayak trip with 16 people. By my reckoning it was going to be about 10 times as fun as the 120 person trip, and I thought it was. We got to kayak right over the coral, not even a meter above it. We ended up on a small coral beached "rock" that wasn't big enough to be designated with island status. We snorkled, climbed to the top of the 'rock', looped it by foot on the boulders, had a nice small healthy lunch, and paddled back again. The coral was clearer, more colorful and easier to get right next to than the spot from the outer reef. The fishlife wasn't as good, but they were still very abundant. We like being right down on the water best.

The third day we took a large catamaran for another 9 hour day this time sailing around all the Whitsunday Islands, snorkling, and spending a couple hours at Whitehaven Beach. Unfortunately for the sailing enthusiasts the wind refused to blow. It was warm and windless all day (just like Karen likes it) . We motored instead and the snorkling was very good again and the time at Whitehaven was magical. The sand is pure white and the water is wonderfully warm. The beach is accessible only from the water and has no facilities at all. Completely unspoiled. We tendered in and played for a nice long time. One boat employee brought frisbees, soccer balls and cricket gear ashore and we played with all 3, but mostly played in the shallow bathlike water. We'd been looking forward to going to this beach ever since we'd starting planning for this trip and it did not disappoint. It lived up to the brochures.


We hope you enjoy the photos. This was a place we'd like to return to someday.