Great Barrier Reef

Wow. If you can ever go, GO. Yes, this was one of the best. vacations. ever. I know it's a long way, but if you're wondering if it's really worth it, I'm here to tell you it certainly is.

To get to our holiday destination we flew north to a group of islands called the Whitsunday Islands. The Whitsundays are an archipelago of 74 islands all located within the boundaries of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. 66 of the islands are uninhabited and several of the islands have a single lodge/resort on them. We stayed on Hamilton Island, which has a 'town' and some private residences in addition to a couple hotels. Since there were 5 of us we got a townhouse to stay in which came with a 'buggy', aka golf cart, to get us around the little island.

The trip started out with a bang when we were overwhelmed by the fancy place we ended up staying. I'd taken a shot in the dark and called the resort lodging (sort of like calling say Vail resorts) and worked with them on when to come and where to stay. We had a little bit of play with timing since our guests from the US were here for nearly three weeks. Great accommodation, great views, high chair and crib included. We were greeted on our living room balcony by two sulphur crested cockatoos, which were the first of many interesting wildlife sightings. The other animals that came to visit included blue winged kookaburras, rainbow lorikeets (little parrots), giant and very noisy bats, and some very hungry possums.

Our first adventure was a day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. The GBR stretches 1,250 miles along the coast of Australia, so obviously it's enormous. It's actually made up of nearly 3,000 separate reefs of three different kinds. Fringing reefs are the ones right around the edges of islands, platform reefs form in shallow water and grow up and then out to form a platform, and ribbon reefs are narrow strips right on the edge of the continental shelf, found mainly at the north end of the GBR.

Our trip went out to a platform reef. The group we went with practices eco-tourism and what they've done is permanently moor a pontoon out at the reef. The boat parks out at the pontoon and all the scuba, snorkeling, submarine rides, and all other activities take place from the pontoon. Food, bathrooms, trash, are all done on the boat so everything gets packed home. They even provide FREE childcare. WHOA.

Travis, Mom, and Eric all signed up for the morning scuba trip. My mom is certified (but no paperwork with her), Travis has done a resort dive before, and this was Eric's first time ever. They all did really well and after some thorough lessons they all took the plunge and got to do some crazy things like hold a giant clam. The ship videographer caught the dive on camera and we bought a copy so you can see Travis floating away, my mom's hair going crazy, and Eric working hard to breathe calmly :)

While they were all off having fun on their dive FFM and I took a submarine ride to see the reef without getting wet. That was great fun and perfect for wee ones too small for scuba or snorkeling (next time FFM, I promise). We even spotted a rare ridgeback sea turtle, so cool! Later in the day we took advantage of the free childcare and dumped off our kid (as all good parents do. pretty sure he wasn't infecting the other kids) and all went for a snorkel. I've got a underwater camera that I need to get developed, hopefully some turn out. The day we were on reef was an extra low tide day so the reef was,unusually, actually fully exposed to the air. Normally we would have been swimming around on top of the reef but the water was so low that the reef was poking up and we just swam along the edge. Reefs need to be underwater or they will die, but they can survive a few hours of extra low tide.

We also went for a hike during our stay on Hamilton Island. The flora of the Whitsundays is really interesting to me. From a distance they look a lot like islands in the Pacific Northwest, say the San Juans or islands in Alaska. But you look closer and realize the trees are all wrong! And then you spot a palm tree and know it's really different. Our hike took us through palms, mangroves, evergreens, eucalyptus, and many other trees and shrubs I can't begin to identify. We hiked to a secluded beach, only one beach on our island was accessible by buggy, all others you needed to hike in to.

Our last big adventure was a trip to Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island. This beach is famous for it's 9km of white white sand. The sand is minute powder-size grains of quartz and is 99.89% pure, well above the minimum requirement for glass-making, and suitable for the finest glass for optical lenses for binoculars etc. Have no fear, the beach is protected and no mining companies are going to start digging away anytime soon. This was my favorite part of the whole trip, the crystal clear water, the soft white sand, lots of space for all of us to roam around in... definitely (one of my) idea of paradise.

I put a selection of the 100s of photos I took into a slideshow, this one is not automatic you'll need to click to make it go. It seems to go a bit fast, feel free to use the pause button so you can read the captions. I've got some video clips from Whitehaven I'm working on that (hopefully) I'll get posted later this week. Our internet connection has been the speed of dial up so uploading items is taking me a really long time. The very first picture of the slide show is from an outing we took to Coolangatta the week before we went up to the Whitsundays, FFM's fever had finally broken and we needed a day out of the house. We stayed FAR away from people but the fresh air definitely did good things for him.