Postcards form a Backpacker

Diving Whitsunday's & Great Barrier Reef

Posted in Pacific, Australia, Airlie Beach

Having left Sydney I booked myself on a flight up the East coast of Australia to the resort town of Airlie Beach, via Proserpine airport. Airlie Beach is billed as the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef beyond. Airlie Beach itself is a town almost entirely dedicated to backpackers and the business they create. The place is full of hostels, travel agents booking offices, pubs, clubs and fast food restaurants. The beach is not bad and is lined with palm trees, but the water this time of year is off limits due to poisonous jelly fish.This is described by the locals as ‘stinger season’. The main thing people do here in Airlie is book a boat trip out to the islands and this is what I did too. I chose a catamaran called ‘Pacific Star”. This was not the most elegant boat on offer and being over 20 years old not the fastest on the water. The main draw was the fact it was geared towards diving and was one of the only boats that actually makes the trip to the Great Barrier Reef itself, not just the islands.

I booked my trip through Oz Sail for a 3 day and 3 night package that included all meals aboard and the first dive. I boarded the boat at the marina at 6.30pm on the first day and met the crew and the rest of the 21 passengers along for the trip. The first night was spent getting to know the crew and my fellow passengers and having a few drinks. This was the only night anyone had much to drink on this trip as the focus was on diving and not on drinking like some of the other boats. Most of which are virtual booze cruses around the islands. The following day we awoke beside Whitsunday Island and after breakfast were ferried to the beach for a short walk to the view point for Whitehaven Beach. Whitehaven beach is one of the most photographed beaches in the world and for good reason, the water around this section of the island is the tropical aquamarine colour of postcard pictures. The sand is 98% silica and the finest, softest, whitest sand I have seen on any beach. It really is exactly how you would imagine a paradise beach to be. After spending a few hours photographing and relaxing on the white sands and in the blue waters, it was back to the boat and we took off to one of the smaller neighboring islands to get over some of the reef that surrounds the islands, to do my first dive.

This was my very first experience of scuba diving. I had wanted to do my PADI course since back when I was at Lake Malawi but had not got around to it because of budget and time constraints. I intended to do it from here at Airlie but the PADI course was not offered by any of the dive centers here, only the less recognized SSI courses. They do the qualification each night, so the boat would return to Airlie and does not venture as far as the outer reef. This was the main reason I wanted to do the course; so I could dive on the Great Barrier Reef itself. I decided to go for this trip and do some introductory drives without a formal qualification. I am glad I made that choice as I got my chance to dive on both the soft coral reefs of the islands and the harder coral reefs of the outer reef. The experience was the same for me as it was for the qualified open water diver on my boat, except our dive group was smaller (an advantage as far as I was concerned), and the fact I was not able to do a night dive. It was a strange experience breathing underwater but one I quickly became fairly comfortable with. Our dive master Tom was great and made me feel confident on both the dives I did with him. The photos really don’t do justice to the beauty of the reef, the colours of the fish and the coral were as vivid as I had expected. I really enjoyed the dives I did and spent just over an hour under water in the two dive sites and reached a depth of about 12 meters. I will definitely be doing more diving in the future and will get my qualification when I get another chance.

The last day on the boat was spent on a sand bar spit between two islands, taking a swim in our ‘stinger suits’ (a wetsuit to protect against jellyfish stings) and doing more snorkelling. That was almost as impressive a view of the fish and coral in places as the scuba diving! We had our final lunch on the boat and started the three hour journey under sail back to the marina. That evening the group met at the “Beaches” bar for a few drinks while I regained my land legs after being on the swaying boat for the last three days.

The Great Barrier Reef together with the white sands and blue waters of the Whitsunday islands really are one of those things that you expect to be amazing and beautiful – they do not disappoint.

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