Hamilton Island – Great Barrier Reef

What a change, beds, bathroom, balcony and space. This was to be our home for the next four nights and a nice way to spend Christmas. Hamilton Island in peak season is pretty busy as you would expect, although we were a little surprised at being around so many people again.The first couple of days on the island we had rain and lots of it, in hindsight it was better to have those two days of rain in the room and not stuck in the troopy – either way it is hard to be in such a place with non stop rain. Christmas day and thankfully the sun came out, we had booked a reef cruise and it did not disappoint, the day was spent snorkelling and touring the great barrier reef.

Boxing day we decided we wanted to go to Whitehaven Beach, being totally not organised we didn’t book anything to get to Whitehaven and were surprised that all the cruise boats were booked out, doh! Normal people book their trips in advance, Luckily a lovely lady suggested to we take a ski boat to drop/pick us up with a family of four this worked out to be cheaper than the tour and we could spend all day there. What an awesome day all day snorkelling and enjoying Whitehaven Beach and get way to sunburnt.

We left Hamilton the following day with a lot of uncertainty about our next destination. We spent a night at Airlie Beach caravan park as we arrived late and seeing the masses of people on top of each other at this park we realised we needed to move on. Having a look around the area a local suggested that we might check out a spot further north from Airlie called Dingo Beach and Hideaway Bay. We drove there not knowing what to expect but anything had to be better than the madness of the peak season caravan park.