Day 15 – Tuesday, November 4th

The whole crew on Whitehaven Beach

View down the beach

Float planes are apparently the WAY to travel here.

We had another rolling night, but still managed to sleep well, waking up about 5:00….pretty much as soon as the sun floods into the cabin.

We have been hearing several birds on the surrounding hills, including one that I call a “Whoop-Whoop Bird”….cant wait to find out what it really is. We have also been watching the Sulfur Crested Cockatoos in the hills. It is fun to look out over the green hills and see the brilliant white birds flying across it and sheltering in the trees.

We left Cateran Bay at about 9:00 and traveled for 2 hours to Whitehaven Bay. While we were traveling, we saw one or two dolphins jumping out of the water a little way behind us. Several times they were silhouetted against the islands, but on one jump he had the clear blue skies behind him and you could really see the outline…..it was beautiful.

The beach at Whitehaven is almost 5 kms in length and is a beautiful white sand. It is supposedly the third nicest beach in the world……the first two are in the Carribean and the Maldives. What makes this nicest is that the only way to visit is either by boat, sea plane or helicopter, and there were plenty of these around in the afternoon.

We rode a VERY bumpy Tender onto the beach and spent about an hour floating in the surf and walking along the sand. We saw 2 Sting Rays swimming along the water’s edge and enjoyed watching them.

The afternoon was spent watching all of the traffic in and out of the island. There were some HUGE tour boats that pulled really close to the shore and unloaded their passengers directly into the water by the shore. One of the helicopters set up two small tents for their passengers and then gave them about an hour on the beach before packing them back up and flying off again. The sea planes were the most fun to watch as they would often look like they were heading directly for our boat, but then they would turn and take off into the wind.

Our boat has been continually circled by sea turtles of all sizes. They are hard to see because they only surface for short periods of time, but it is fun to see them poking their heads out of the water.

As the light faded, we realized that we are the ONLY boat along this entire shore….it seems a bit desolate at times. The winds and waves have been fairly rough tonight, but we all have our sea legs and are coping fine. It is fun to lay in bed and be rocked to sleep each night.

All night long Danny has said “I think it is calming” and we have given him much grief as it continued to be rough all night long.

Today was the running of the Melbourne Cup horse race which….ALL of Australia completely shuts down for it. We cant wait to get to a main island tomorrow and see who won and also who won elections!!!