Soaking up PARADISE with Dr Rum
Malcolm Herdman revels in the intoxicating beauty of Australia’s Whitsunday Islands – and meets some very colourful local characters
GOOD on ya, mite!’ said the man in the airport security queue at Sydney, as I handed him the passport he had dropped without noticing. ‘Where ya headed for?’ When I told him I was going to the Queensland coast and the fabulous Whitsundays, he replied: ‘Ah, beaut. You’ll lav it. Wish I was. I’m headed for the cold south. Be even colder than here.’
Arriving Down Under in winter from the northern hemisphere, you have to make a few mental adjustments. The further south you go, of course, the cooler it gets.
There’s nothing cold about the welcome in Australia, though. You’ll instantly feel at home.
I’d caught a glimpse of Sydney’s famous Harbour Bridge as we came in to land. Now, though, we were heading to Brisbane (or Brizzie as the man at the airport called it), then further north to the airfield at Proserpine.
It has recently been renamed Whitsunday Coast airport, to acknowledge the reason why most people use it.
Even though it was winter, the temperature was a pleasantly warm 20C when we reached Airlie Beach, a town on the mainland that is the usual starting point for trips out to the Whitsundays.
We were staying at the Mirage Whitsundays, a stunning collection of new, self-catering apartments and houses overlooking Pioneer Bay.
Wealthier visitors to the Whitsundays used to fly to Hamilton Island, which has its own small airport, bypassing Airlie Beach altogether. Now the town is becoming more popular, thanks in part to the recent upgrade of the Proserpine airport.
Although this region was hit by Cyclone Debbie earlier this year, Airlie Beach and the Whitsundays escaped relatively lightly compared with other places along the Queensland coast. Holidaymakers have been urged by officials not to cancel their plans.
Those who do come here would be well advised to book one of Dan Moreira’s Segway tours. After a few minutes of instruction, our group took off on these battery-powered scooters along the Bicentennial Walkway towards lovely Cannonvale Beach.
On the way, Dan regaled us with anecdotes about the area, such as how he built part of his kitchen out of teak salvaged from a local shipwreck, and how Angelina Jolie, who once filmed here, ordered chocolate brownies from the bakery in Airlie Beach – and they quickly became her favourite. ‘You’ll see why if you try them,’ he said. From the beach we could see the spectacular wreck where Dan found his kitchen worktops. The lovely threemasted schooner Whitsunday Magic was driven aground in a storm almost three years ago, and her owners were unable to afford the cost of salvaging her. Anne-Marie Oxley, manager of the
Mirage, said: ‘It’s kind of sad to see her – I had my wedding reception aboard her. Now she just sits there rotting.’
The wreck has become something of a tourist attraction after being left to the mercy of the elements in Pioneer Bay.
After our Segway adventure, we wandered into Airlie Beach’s Rum Bar. ‘We’ve got 501 different varieties here,’ said owner Mark Wyatt, an Englishman known affectionately around here as Dr Rum. As we gazed at the bewildering array of bottles displayed behind the bar, he joked: ‘We’ll get you through as many of them as we can!’
Dr Rum is a mine of information on his favourite spirit, having travelled extensively around the Caribbean. Though not a distiller himself, he blends rums, and also has a collection of rare bottles, including a pre-Castro Cuban Bacardi.
We spent a convivial couple of hours being plied with rums before heading for a restaurant by the lagoon called Mr Bones, where we ate delicious lamb and baba ganoush pizza, washed down with yet more rum.
TAKING a boat from Airlie Beach to see the Great Barrier Reef is a six-hour round trip, so if you haven’t got your sea legs, an Air Whitsundays seaplane flight is a better option. In 1975, one of the airline’s pilots, John Ramsden, was the first to notice a wonderful heart-shaped cluster of coral, measuring just 56ft across. Since then, Heart Reef has been the site of hundreds of declarations of love and marriage proposals, as couples fly over it.
Divers and snorkellers are banned from the area because of its protected status, so a flight is the only way to see it properly.
The underwater patterns formed by the vast areas of coral looked like a bright turquoise and blue abstract painting, as our pilot Mike went in search of Heart Reef. But even he, despite his expert knowledge of the area, sometimes finds it difficult to spot immediately. But suddenly there it was. ‘Thank goodness for that. I was beginning to think I might have missed it,’ said Mike. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’
There are 74 islands in the Whitsundays, and most of them are uninhabited. Many are little more than rocky protrusions with a few trees growing on them. They took their name from a log in Captain Cook’s journal, in which he wrote of ‘Whitsunday’s passage’ on the day he sailed among them in 1770.
It’s often jokingly claimed that they should be called the Whitmondays as Cook would have had to cross the international dateline (had it existed back then) on his voyage, and was therefore a day ahead of the time back in Britain.
Seven of the islands now have exclusive resorts on them, with Hayman Island featuring regularly in lists of the world’s most exclusive private getaways.
After the success of our flight, we decided it was time to discover the delights of Pioneer Bay on jet-skis.
Our instructor, Captain Tony, of Ocean Dynamics, led us on a fast ride across the bay, culminating in a visit to the wreck of the Whitsunday Magic. Although the vessel had looked intact from a distance, the ship was a sad sight close up, her cabin curtains in tatters, and mud and silt covering her decks.
We also signed up for a trip to Whitsunday Island from Abell Point Marina, near Airlie Beach, in a rigid inflatable.
‘Hope you’re ready for a fast ride!’ said Ross, our ‘eco host’, as we climbed aboard the vessel. Fast it certainly was – and bumpy too – and Ross handed out waterproofs to keep the spray off our clothes.
Whitsunday Island is the largest
of the Whitsundays and is a national park. Our captain, Keith, dropped us off at the sandy bay of Cid Harbour. It felt like being abandoned on a desert island, but Ross led us into the tropical undergrowth and up and over a wooded hill to a lookout spot on the other side of the island. From there we could see the entire sweep of Whitehaven Beach, frequently cited as the most beautiful in the world.
More than four miles of the whitest sand I’ve ever seen stretched out below us. From the lookout we could also see Hill Inlet, where the currents continuously whirl the sand and the water around, to create a dazzling mix of blues, greens, whites and turquoises. There are strict conservation laws to preserve the sand. ‘The rule here is, “Take only photos. Leave only footprints,” ’ said Ross.
After snorkelling over coral with a shoal of moon wrasse and a giant but gentle Napoleon wrasse (so-called because the bump on its head makes it look as if it’s wearing the little emperor’s hat), we headed back to harbour.
‘Hope you’ve enjoyed it,’ said Ross. ‘Make sure you get yourself back again one day.’
After our holiday of a lifetime, we reluctantly made our way back to Whitsunday Coast airport, where the Whisky Charlie Bar was doing a brisk trade – though I’m not sure whether punters were having a dram of whisky or a shot of Dr Rum’s favourite spirit.
All too soon our flight was called, so we did not have the opportunity to toast the people who’d made our trip such a pleasure. Anyway, I’m not sure what the traditional Australian toast is.
Possibly ‘Good on ya, mite.’