9 September 2005 (Day 4)

Again we woke up early. Another beautiful day up here in the Whitsunday Islands. Late last night we booked a cruise on the Banjo Patterson – a former Sydney to Hobart yacht.
The cruise left the marina at 9am. We sailed around Hamilton Island then through the pass between Hamilton and Whitsunday Island, which we can see from our hotel room.
Then it was a slow leisurely ride up the coast of Whitsunday Island until we reached Chalkies Beach. Similar to Whitehaven Beach, Chalkies has a fringing reef where we were able to snorkel for about an hour.
The beach was named after the former owner of the Banjo Patterson – after the Sydney to Hobart people would start a tab for their drinks, the former owner was the ‘Chalkie’ who chalked up the tab. He started taking people to the beach before going to Whitehaven Beach. Before not too long, it became known as ‘Chalkies Beach’. ‘Chalkie’ now owns the massive Fantasea fleet of boats that race around here.
So many different tropical fish in the water at Chalkies. Some of the ones that we’re getting used to seeing, such as the Blue Tuskfish, Golden Damsels, Beaked Parrotfish, Blue-lined Rabbitfish, Honeycomb Cod and Scissor Tail Sargeant. A new one that we found yesterday was the Black Anemonefish. These guys are like the Clown Fish that have been made popular from ‘Finding Nemo’. Others we saw were the Beaked Coaralfish, Six-banded Angelfish, Rainford’s Butterflyfish and Gold Banded Butterflyfish.
We had lunch on the yacht – grilled fish, cold meats and salad – before sailing across to Whitehaven Beach. Whitehaven Beach is a World Heritage Listed area and spans 6.5 kilometres. It is composed of 98% pure silica. The sand is so fine that it is like icing sugar and just as white. The water is also incredibly clear, giving a lovely blue colour. But that’s about it for Whitehaven Beach. No reef. No snorkelling. Nothing. Most people chose to sit around and sunbake for the hour that we had there. We walked to one end (only about 500 metres) and we found some skinks! It’s always a good day when you find a skink or two!
We took a few photos with the film camera and then headed back to wait for the tender to take us back to the yacht (for those who don’t know, the tender is the dingy that is used to transport you from the big boat to somewhere else – it seems to be a big thing to call it a tender up here!)
We sailed back to Hamilton Island as the weather looked to be setting in, but it held off and as we came around the corner to return to the marina we saw a huge cruiser, Boedica. This cruiser is owned by Reg Grundy, of Channel 9 fame. The cruiser is six storeys high and worth $283 million – and apparently running costs are 10% per year for any vessel. Ouch!
Apparently Boedica comes up here once or twice a year and it is too big to fit into the marina.
After landing we headed off to grab an ice-cream and then went to the Yacht Club bottleshop to get some beer – the only place around here that doesn’t seem to have inflated prices!
We headed back to the room after stopping off at the General Store and Helen made us hamburgers using the George Forman Grill we brought along (and Daniel covered the smoke alarm – just in case!) We ordered some chips from room service (and latter a Sticky Date pudding!) to have whilst downing some beers and watching the Sydney Swans fall over the line against Geelong in the Preliminary Final. Everyone in the hotel probably heard the last few minutes of the game!!!