Our week at Airlie Beach & Hamilton Island (2)

SATURDAY 22nd Feb

Kelly decided she'd like to buy a top for tomorrow's crossing - just in case it's colder out at sea - and I joined her, partly to recce the walk down to the ferry port to check that we didn't need a taxi to get there tomorrow. Asher then decided that he would like to go too, so the 3 of us set off - and it was a fairly short walk down to the port and the marina.

From the port, we looked back at our resort:

The units with the blue roofs form the Wyndham resort that we were staying at.

Kelly got a hoodie and Asher a pair of water shoes. We picked up more snacks at Woolworths and headed back - and that was the extent of our excursions today. We had some visitors to our apartments:

This was far from the last time we would get a close-up with cockatoos. Note the turquoise seas beyond the marina - everywhere was like this. Was this an effect of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef?

We still had the occasional showers passing through but they were much less frequent than yesterday and mostly only lasted minutes. Everyone just carried on doing what they were doing. You could see the squalls coming and I caught this rainbow:

SUNDAY 23rd Feb

After breakfast we rolled our bags down the hill to the ferry port where there was some interesting art:

All the ferries are catamarans. Our journey was scheduled to last 85 minutes with 2 brief stops on the way to let off passengers. Jo and I sat at the back of the deck in the direction of travel while Kelly found a spot facing us where she and the boys could snuggle together. We knew the crossing was going to be a bit rough as it was windy but it was far from cold - even out in the open ocean.

All bar me had taken Kwells as a precaution but only Asher seemed a little affected by the movement of the boat but he put on a brave face here:

First stop was Daydream Island:

Then it was Hamilton Island - first of all at the airport. The runway goes all the way from one side of the island to the other - a distance of just one mile which is pretty short, but we watched as some reasonably large planes took off and landed.

The other side of the marina - just minutes away - was where we got off. One of the hosts of our apartment met us and drove us the short distance to our property, which was in Catseye Bay, overlooking the beach. We had huge bifold doors to our balconies:

Visitors get round by golf buggies - hundreds of them - no cars allowed:

We had lunch at a marina restaurant then took the buggy on a short island recce:

One of the other notable features of the island is the number of wallabies everywhere. In the gardens beneath our accommodation, every morning a small team came out to clean up their poo from the grass. The other wildlife notables are the hundreds of cockatoos - more of them later.