400 km south of Cairns and 30 minutes east of Airlie Beach is Hamilton Island. It's one of hundreds comprising the Whitsunday Group at the southeastern end of the Great Barrier Reef. The FantaSea 2000 is a wavepiercer ferry boat that travels daily from Airlie Beach to Hamilton.
This pretty wooded island looks like an old-fashioned fishing village. On the curved bay surrounding the harbor are a variety of shops and restaurants. The Hotel, the oldest on the GBR, is also one of the most controversial. The owner dynamited the top of a hill to build a helipad, dredged a boat marina and removed another hill to accommodate the airport's runway.
But the hotel offers a greater range of ammenities of any island on the Reef -–– 6 types of accommodations, 8 restaurants, a pool with trained dolphins, a jacuzzi, and a motorcycle museum –– all overlooking picturesque Catseye Beach and the Coral Sea beyond. We waded out a few hundred feet into the knee-high 80 degree water here. Low tides, rocky bottom. Wear your AquaSox.
The birds here are plentiful and plenty vocal. You can hear kookaburras, sulfur-crested cockatoos, red and green parrots squawking and chirping everywhere.
Quick Tips:
The actual Reef is another ferry ride, a helijet ( US per person) or a seaplane US) away. We signed up for the SeAir Tour which was a 1/2 hour flight each way and 2 hours on the water. Diving was another . It can get quite choppy here, so beware of the power of the current, even if you're snorkeling off the ReefWorld. The fish life was amazingly rich and diverse. The reef here is incredible, providing food for many small fish as well as a 5-foot-long Maori Wrasse that weighed 400 lbs. There's even a small aquarium section to watch the fish through a room surrounded by ocean on three sides.
Dinner was like a Shakespeare play –– 'A Comedy Of Errors.' One waiter sat us, a second took our appetizer order, a third heard our entree order, and a fourth brought the entrees before the rest of the food! How could any of the waiters know what the others were doing?
Another night, we ordered a pizza from Room Service –– THE WORST WE EVER HAD! It was actually made of velveeta cheese, not mozzarella. Can you imagine anything more repulsive?
Best Way To Get Around:
• Hamilton Island is small enough to walk, but you can also rent bikes here.
• Sailboats and catamarans are waiting on the beach for hotel guests to use.
• Luxury cabin cruisers dock here for Hayman Island and other plush resorts.
• Seaplanes and helicats fly from here to other nearby islands and ReefWorld on the GBR.