Whitsundays

Nodding off is not the point in Australia’s first underwater hotel room, writes CATHERINE BEST

THIS place is full of voyeurs. They gawp at me on the loo, eyeball me in the shower and upskirt me in the bedroom. It’s the most exclusive bed in the Whitsundays but my Reefsuite feels a bit like a $2 peep show.

Marine critters peer in day and night, googly eyes and gaping mouths appraising me with vacant disinterest. I could lower the blinds, but then I’d be depriving myself of the most marvellous overnight stay of my life.

Water is my happy place. I’m a scuba diver with gill-envy, and sleeping under water — here, on the Great Barrier Reef — is my version of a penthouse at the Ritz.

My sunken suite, 4m below the waterline on the new $10 million Reefworld pontoon, has floor-to-ceiling windows and glass panels in the floor.

It glows ambient blue and sighs with the rhythm of the ocean and is a porthole to the largest coral reef on the planet.

Giant trevally flash beyond the glass, purple surgeon fish swish yellow crescent-moon tails and teeny damsels — some golden others striped like zebras — nibble at algae on the windowsill.

Schools of bait fish sway like wind chimes, scattering as I move, and the water crackles and pops with the sound of fish feeding. It’s electric.

I’m not going to sleep a wink.

“I know I wouldn’t be sleeping much with all that incredible activity outside my window,” concedes Luke Walker, chief operating officer of Cruise Whitsundays’ parent company Journey Beyond.

“The beauty of Reefsuites is that you can relax in bed and watch the splendour of the incredible reef life unfold around you.”

Reefsuites is Australia’s first underwater hotel, opened on the Reefworld pontoon at Hardy Reef on December 1.

The three-level pontoon, part of the Whitsunday’s vigorous comeback from Cyclone Debbie, has just two interconnecting underwater suites, as well as 12 revamped Reefsleep beds situated under the stars on the upper deck.

Sleeping here is an exclusive experience (the pontoon accommodates a maximum of 28) but visiting is not.

During the day overnighters share the pontoon with up to 300 day trippers who’ve made the three-hour boat journey from Airlie Beach (or taken the much faster helicopter option).

It’s a little chaotic. The deck heaves with neoprene-clad divers, hordes of snorkellers dressed like seals in stinger suits and sunburnt tourists toting prawn-laden plates.

But at 3pm, the last passenger shuffles up the gangway, a horn blasts and the boat, mercifully, takes them all away.

A calmness washes over the pontoon and the 10 remaining guests and six staff breathe a sigh of relief.

Now I get the keys to my suite. I skip down a gleaming white stairwell, peel open the door and step into an underwater realm.

The room is cosy without being claustrophobic. There’s a kingsize bed with premium linen, reading lights and USB charging ports and an ensuite with a corner shower and elegant pedestal basin.

It’s all immaterial, really.

The room is all about those windows; I could be sleeping on a bed of barnacles and I wouldn’t care.

My only hope is that I get to spend the night with George. He’s an amorous fella, albeit not much to look at, with a body like a legless cow and a face only a shark could love.

The resident grouper and I are unlikely bedfellows but I’ll keep the light on for him just the same.

Upstairs, the bar is open. We chink glasses and nibble canapes of pesto mushrooms and sugarcane-cured salmon as the sun disappears somewhere over the ocean.

Dinner is normally upstairs under the stars but it’s too windy, so we dine on a long share table on the snorkelling deck, feasting on a generous surf ’n’ turf banquet.

When I return to my suite, I find someone has charged the water with a cattle prod. The trevally — slow and lumbering earlier — are fast and frisky, swimming in a cyclonic swirl captured in blue floodlights.

I slip between the sheets, flick the internal lights off and watch. It’s hypnotic.

I nod off intermittently and wake with a start at 3am. An enormous shadow creeps across the window.

George is here — or his cousin at least. For an hour or more I watch as the grouper makes slow, methodical laps in the light, passing at the foot of my bed.

Sleep comes in (unwelcome) spurts but I’m awake before sunrise.

I step outside, the clouds are pink and the air heavy with the aroma of coffee, as a turtle surfaces alongside the deck.

By the time I leave, my turtle tally will be five. During my stay I dive and snorkel and cruise under water in a semi-submarine.

I float over forests of staghorn coral, see Maori wrasse, giant clams, countless Nemos and a stingray the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. But nothing compares to sleeping under water.

When I get home, everyone wants to know what it was like.

Fabulous, I tell them. Surreal. Worst sleep ever.