We made it to Airlie Beach, the main stopping-off point for the Whitsunday Islands, and popped into the National Park office for advice on which of the 74 islands to visit. The islands are within the Great Barrier Reef marine park so we wanted somewhere with good snorkling and good bushwalking which was also quiet! We settled on South Molle island, closest to the mainland and only a 15 minute boat ride away. We were told it had fab bushwalking and we could snorkel off the beach. After checking tides (boats can only land on the beaches at high tide so they don't damage the coral) we were told we had to be at the marina for 6.15am the next day! We spent the afternoon swimming in the Airlie Beach lagoon, a gorgeous man-made swimming lagoon right next to the beach.....the reason for not swimming in the sea will become apparent soon!
We arrived at the marina the next morning and were advised that we needed to hire "stinger suits" for snorkelling due to the presence of marine stingers in the water this time of year. The suits turned out to be incredibly sexy lycra all-in-ones complete with hood and mits and a photo may well become available for your amusement soon! The stingers can be potentially deadly and need immediate medical attention...so considering we were camping on a deserted beach and had no mobile we decided to hire them (as well as purchasing a litre of vinegar to treat the stings).
When we got to the island, we had just put the tent up when it began to pour with rain so we spent an hour dozing with fingers crossed that it would pass over soon. Fortunately it did so we donned our stinger suits and went into the lovely warm water. The snorkelling was fantastic and we saw loads of different types of coral (stag-horn coral, brain coral) and quite a few fish. We did see one small jellyfish but we floated over the top of it so no problem!
Seeing as we'd had such an early start, we still had loads of the day left so we followed one of the bush trails into the centre of the island. South Molle Island is mostly national park so the walks were really well signposted. We decided to walk to the other side of the island, about 4km away, where we'd heard there was a resort and so potentially an open bar serving cold beer (did we mention it was hot???). The tracks wound their way through eucalypt forest and over open grassland with wondeful views of the other islands, until we came to the resort. However, there appeared to be no-one there and we wandered around calling hello until someone at reception answered. They told us that they were in the process of shutting down for the wet season but that the bar would open in 10minutes for the sail-boat crews who moor off the resort beach. 2 cold beers later we were ready to hike back to our camp and cook our dinner of chilli-con-carne (tinned) on our trusty trangia! After we had eaten we saw several flying foxes leaving their colony on the island to feed.
The next day we woke early and were out on the bush trails by 8am.....our plan was to get going in the early morning to beat the heat! We hiked to a look-out called Spion Kop from which we had great views of the other Whitsunday Islands. Back at our beach camp we put on our suits for another snorkling session. We'd been in the water about 5 minutes when John felt something brush along his arm....on closer inspection, it turned out to be a jellyfish (of the dangerous box-jellyfish type!) about 15cm in diameter. Cue much panic and inhaling of salt water as we hurried to turn and swim in the other direction! We saw another of these in that direction so we tried a third direction only to see a HUGE jellyfish about 40cm accross....we quickly decided that was enough snorkelling for the time being and splashed our way back to dry land! N.B We did manage to go in again later when the tide was out and again had spectacular views of the coral.
Due to the tides, the boat picked us up the next morning at 7.30am and we were back in Airlie Beach by 8am. We had enjoyed the snorkelling on the island so much that we decided to fork out to go on a trip to the Outer Great Barrier Reef, where there are many more fish and more undisturbed coral. We left the following day and cruised out on a high-speed catamaran through the Whitsundays. As soon as we left the protection of the islands, the sea became a bit choppy and both of us were feeling rather green for a while! When we got to the reef the boat moored to a permanent pontoon, with an underwater observatory, semi-submersible boat and huge snorkling area. Almost immediately we were lucky enough to see 3 sea turtles swimming around in the azure blue water. We were told later that after they hatch they head out to the open ocean for 30-40years before they head back to breed so the ones we saw must have been at least that old! Heading down into the underwater observatory, we saw an amazing colourful variety of fish....it was almost like being in a sealife centre! This made us desperate to get into the water so off we went (complete with sexy suits!). Because we were snorkling offshore there was a huge current which took us a bit by surprise but there were ropes to drag yourself along by so we eventually managed to get away from the pontoon. Once we did we were rewarded by views of the most spectacular fish, including irridescent Parrot Fish, which have a parrot-like beak they use to eat the algae on the coral (we could hear them doing this!).
On returning to the boat we were ready for the buffet BBQ lunch and having worked up quite an appetite we proceeded to devour an significant proportion of Queensland's beef output (plus a little bit of salad). We decided that we needed to wait a while before snorkelling as it is likely we would have just sunk or been harpooned by scuba divers, therefore we did a short trip round the reef in the semi-submersible while our lunch was ruminating. We were both more confident on our second snorkelling session and despite the strong tides we investigated the shallow reef and the coral shelf that dropped down into the deep blue abyss... here we saw huge black ugly groper fish. There were also many beautiful and very large giant clams on the reef....their "lips" were a multitude of irridescent colours. We managed to take a few pictures of the reef with our "waterproof" camera.....unfortunately once back on the pontoon, we discovered it is no longer waterproof (thankfully we later found out that we hadn't lost the pictures).
