Hamilton Island

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We’ve been camped out at our friends Kev and Jane’s place in Caringbah. Kev’s even gone off on a six week bush tour leaving Jane to look after us – lucky Jane! It’s like he planned his walkabout while we are here - Hmm. Anyway, all this travelling is exhausting so we’ve jetted off on a well deserved holiday to the Whitsundays in Queensland; Hamilton Island to be precise.

 The island is the holiday destination in the Whitsundays as its been extensively developed for tourists leaving the other islands largely uninhabited. It’s approximately 900 km north of Brisbane and a 2 hour flight from Sydney.

We were picked up by a surly chap called Vince who, if he ever had any cheek muscles with which to smile, they have long since withered away. He is the only grumpy person on the island as everyone else is smiling all the time and happy, and why wouldn’t you be in this beautiful part of the world. Everyone you meet stops to have a chat and ask you what you’ve been doing today, and what your plans are. This might be a tad annoying if you were in a rush, but hey, this is paradise and everyone is uber relaxed – all there is to do is have fun and chill out.

We chose Hamilton to meet up with our friends Lyn and Rudy who unbelievably live in this paradise. They moved into their new apartment while we were there overlooking the marina, which is the hub of the island, and the yacht club, an extraordinary building that manages to look like a fish, a manta ray and a helicopter depending on where you view it from and the time of day. Despite its name it stubbornly refuses to host any yacht club, but contains an empty gymnasium and a very fine restaurant.

Happy go lucky Vince showed us into a golf buggy that was our transport during our stay. These are everywhere on Hamilton. Everyone zips around in these between beeches, resorts, the marina and the hill top views. The speed limit for the island is 20km which I don’t think is threatened by the buggies, but they are great fun and a god send as it is extremely hilly.

We were soon joined by Mags’ sister Kazza and our friends Helen and Barn who flew in from Melbourne. Next day we booked a tour and headed off on a fast catamaran to the outer barrier reef. The trip out was a little choppy and some of our group arrived a little shaken if not stirred.

All was soon forgotten as we transferred to the permanent platoon anchored there and donned fins, stinger suits and masks and snorkeled away. There were thousands of fish in all colours, coral, clams large and small, and even a turtle spotted checking out the pontoon. There was an option to scuba dive but not necessary as the reef was only in a few feet of water so we saw everything snorkeling.

Lyn and Rudy took us out sailing to Cid harbor at the nearby, larger Whitsunday Island that is now a national park. (Yes, they have a boat too). Another perfect day. We whiled away a few blissful hours with a short walk on the island through Hoop pine that is now recovering from previous logging activity, and a quick swim in the calm turquoise waters before lunch on board. Doing it tough again.

I couldn’t resist the opportunity to play the Hamilton Island Golf course that is actually situated on nearby Dent Island. So I found myself on the short ferry trip over there at 8am one glorious sunny morning (another one) and was soon installed in another buggy heading off to the 10^th tee. Well, I think the best we can say about the experience is that the views are magnificent. Let’s just say that the pro shop sells a lot of golf balls and I contributed my fair share. The rough is three feet high and as thick as a cabinet minister. It borders all the fairways and greens, so you either hit it on the fairway or it’s a lost ball; no chance of finding it even if the snakes didn’t deter you from looking.

A popular evening activity is to head to the local out point near us at the Pinnacle apartments to watch the sunset. There’s even a pop up bar that opens for business at 4:30 pm. We all headed up there and were treated to a very spectacular and rare sight, an iridescent sunset, where water droplets of uniform size diffract sunlight to produce opalescent hues. Notice the science there. Yes, I had to look it up. It really was amazing with all the colours of the rainbow painted across the clouds in a slightly metallic, wavy caress. 

On another night, as we approached the Bommie restaurant in the Yacht club for dinner with Lyn and Rudy, the moon was surrounded by a thin white sphere of light, a halo. This is another rare phenomenon caused by ice crystals deflecting moonlight. The dinner lived up to the spectacular intro as we had great dishes of slowly poached hen’s egg with asparagus and reef fish with sag aloo, interspersed with an amuse bouche of cerviche with tomato consume served in a test tube and a mouth cleanser of textures of melon. Sounds a bit pretentious but really superb.

We were wisely guided by Lyn and Rudy to pre-order a Coles supermarket delivery from the mainland for our stay, as the food choices on the island are limited by what is stocked in the one general store. The delivery was there when we arrived, hurrah, or at least someone’s delivery was. I think they just give you assorted stuff so what you actually order is somewhat irrelevant – but still, a lot cheaper than buying locally.

Alas, after a superb week, smiley Vince helped us transport our bags to the airport. It suddenly became clear to me what Vince’s purpose is – to gently acclimatise us back into the real world where we mortals live.

Magical Mystery Tour - Part 2

We found our way back to the coast to Cannon Beach, so named after a cannon that was found there in 1846. I’m assuming it was the military rather than the religious kind, but there was no more information. The Beach is spectacular, wide and very long, its 4 mile stretch punctuated by large rocks along the shoreline. Chief among the rocks is Giant Haystacks. Wasn’t there a wrestler in the 70’s called Giant Haystacks, along with Big (don’t call me Shirley) Daddy? This Haystacks is home to numerous seabirds including a colony of puffins from April until July. The beach is a great playground for walking, running, cycling, and flying kites which is particularly popular. The small adjoining town is entirely given over tourism with the usual array of gift shops, antiques, cafes, restaurants and motels. We arrived on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. (How can a day be a weekend?) The place was, if not exactly buzzing, then at least alive with holidaymakers. We walked over to Haystacks and sat on one of the washed up tree trunks to witness the sun dipping slowly over the horizon on its way to Australia. Refreshingly, there’s an absence of beach rules with no signs listing all the activities that are ‘not allowed’. Anything goes here, apparently, including lighting fires on the beach that illuminated our way back home.

The town’s population plunged after the holiday, and we found ourselves wandering the coast largely unaccompanied. We found a pretty coastal trek in the nearby Ecola state park that took us upwards through a dense forest of old growth Sitka spruce and western hemlock trees to a lookout point facing the Tillamook Rock lighthouse.

We left Cannon Beach and Oregon for Washington, entering the green state via a scenic drive North East, crossing the mighty Columbia River at Astoria over an impressive road bridge. So we’re finally in Washington, our last stop in the US before Canada. We were both looking forward to seeing Capitol Hill and the Whitehouse, but decided first to stay on the Hood Canal near the tiny town of Brinnon. The canal looks more like a mighty river at least a mile wide. In fact, its neither river or canal, but a narrow sea inlet. We splashed out and stayed at a cottage right on the water with private beach loaded with oysters and clams.

I hired us a couple of Kayaks in a moment of madness and soon we were cruising the ‘canal’ like Steve Redgrave. The water is mostly very calm here resembling a giant sheet of cling film. Needless to say, after 5 minutes on the water, the wind picked up from nowhere creating white crested waves, and we were soon swallowing sea water and frantically bailing out water with the handily supplied ‘absorbent’ sponge.

We were more fortunate on our next outing and had a wonderful hour among the spectacular scenery and wildlife. We had an inquisitive sea otter check us out, and watched as a pair of eagles fished the water nearby. We reluctantly headed back in when I noticed a strange burning sensation in my arms. Took me a while to realize that it was my muscles complaining – not been used in a while.

I had a round of golf in Oregon at the Gearhart links. I took a chance on the weather and lost, rain from start to finish so I ended up cold and soaked through which meant by the next day I’d completely seized up. You know you’re getting old when to get dressed in the morning you have to lay your undies carefully on the floor, get both feet into the two holes, and then carefully pull them up without bending. Ouch!