10 September 2005 (Day 5)

Our last full day at Hamilton Island. Again we awoke early – amazing what happens when you’re not refereeing until 11pm each night! Low tide this morning was at 8am, so we ventured down to Catseye Beach shortly before 8am.
We ventured into the water and walked out to the reef. This place is amazing! So close to where everyone swims, rides jet skies and catamarans is an abundance of tropical marine life. Today we saw two turtles – the one we saw on the first day is called Henry and would have to be over 100 years old. The second turtle we found a couple of times and Daniel was able to duck dive down and get a fabulous photograph of the green turtle. It’s always a good day when you see a turtle!
Helen also spotted a White-spotted Eagle Ray. We gave chase and were able to get a photo of it, but it isn’t the best.
We also found the usual suspects of fish out here, parrotfish, tuskfish, rabbitfish, angelfish, butterfly fish. In all, 171 photos were taken in an hour and half.
We went back to our room and had breakfast before heading back to the beach for a catamaran lesson and then going for a sail on the resort’s catamarans for an hour.
At 1pm we headed over to the pool for half an hour before heading back down for a ride on the jet skies. Helen rode as pillion as we sped around the course at up to 70km/h! We then had a quick lunch in our room before heading back for another go on the catamarans.
It was then 4pm, which is Happy Hour at the Island Bar, situated in the middle of the main pool. As this is likely to be the one and only time that we would be able to swim up to a bar, we jumped into the pool and ordered a Mud Baby cocktail each. As Helen was shivering so much they thought she wanted a martini, we went back to the room and grabbed another cocktail (Cowgirl) from the bar downstairs.
We headed into the marina for dinner. We stopped in at ‘Trader Petes’ to see what they had there. As it happened, they had a rashie in a size that would fit Daniel – very rare indeed! If only we had found it earlier than our last day – the share price of sunscreen companies would have plummeted!
We headed over to Spinnakers – the island’s steakhouse. Daniel had the Angus Export Rib Eye steak, whilst Helen had the Moreton Bay Bug tails in garlic sauce. Yummy!After a short walk around the marina, we headed back to the hotel and started preparing for tomorrow’s trip across to Perth.