Saturday 8th
September – Just over two weeks left until we fly back to Brisbane. We have booked our plane tickets from
Townsville to Brisbane and plan on heading back on September 24th
for 2 days to sort a few things out at both our work and pick the car and a few
personal belongings up from storage. We
will be staying up the Sunshine Coast with Andrews mum Gay, so that will be
nice. Even though we are loving this
and its been an amazing time, we are also looking forward to getting back to
land for a week or so (saying that we will probably be ready to be back on the
water after some home comforts). We find
the going without a fresh water shower for over a week tough (salt water just doesn’t
cut it and having to wash your hair in salt makes it like straw) and have had
enough of pooping in a bucket and having to throw it overboard. A proper toilet and shower is what are missed
most. Andrew is quite happy to go for
his daily swim around Mingo instead of using the bucket!!!!!!!! Our toilet has not been working properly and
we don’t carry enough fresh water on board to have freshwater showers. We guess a small sacrifice for what we have
seen and the places we have been to over the last couple of months really.
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| The clear green water of Hill Inlet |
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| Crystal Clear water of Hill Inlet |
After breakfast
today we head over to Hill Inlet in the tinny around the top of Whitsunday Island
to pristine clear water and sand banks that now surround us. There are many shades of colour in the water
now from crystal clear swimming pool blue, aqua marine green, dark blue, emerald green and
shades in between. It looks so refreshingly
clean. We motor around the inlet and see
a couple of catamarans and small yachts anchored in here, two of which are up
on sand because of the low tide. We probably
would have made it in here last night but it wasn’t worth the risk of getting
stuck and now we are hear in the tinny it’s just as great.
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| Sinking in the soft sand |
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| Andrew walking on Whithaven |
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| Chris on Whitehaven |
We pull up onto the inside northern part of
Whitehaven beach and once again feel the powdery flour like white sand between
our feet. We sink down a good 6-8 inches
every step we take, its good exercise this.
We walk a 2km stretch of the northern end of Whitehaven beach and then
have a bit of a dip in the water, a little cool until you get your whole body
in and them its beautiful. So clear and
we see stingrays swim past us as we are lying in the water. We are surprised that we are the only people
on the beach for our walk this morning.
There are a lot of boats anchored up the southern end of Whitehaven and people
down there, but we are in our own little Idaho here.
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| Four shades of water at Hill Inlet |
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| Andrew at Whitehaven before we go for a swim |
After walking back
to the tinny we motor around the rest of the inlet and again see all sizes of
stingrays swimming to get away from us.
Some are huge and glide so gracefully through the water. Its really beautiful in here and we spend a
good couple of hours motoring, then head back towards the mouth and over to a
small yacht that we had helped guide through the reef at Gulnare Inlet a week
or so ago. We pulled up beside them and
chatted for 20 minutes. They can get
their yacht into 300 mm of water so had no problems getting into the inlet –
lucky them. They were telling us of a
horror story about some boat that had flipped on the reef the day before, all
had been rescued by the coast guard and how they had gone through some rough
water themselves a few days previous where the waves were slamming over their
20 foot yacht and turned their tinny upside down. They said it was petrifying so were enjoying
being in the calmness of Hill Inlet.
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