Thanks to yesterday's monster drive and another early start, by mid morning, we'd arrived at the Whitsunday's Shute Harbour, hired a double sea kayak and about twenty minutes later were setting off around the outlying Whitsunday Islands on a kayaking mini-adventure.
A short distance from Shute Harbour are three small islands that we journeyed around by ourselves. The rental base was conveniently right on the waters edge by the docks; with the van parked outside, it was a pretty smooth/fast transition from driving to kayaking!
The water was a wonderful blue green colour, although recent stormy weather meant that it was not as clear as usual, so not worth snorkelling. We didn't mind, it was just great being out exploring by boat, under our own steam.
Around the back of the islands, with the harbour out of view, it felt both remote and secluded. We could just pull-up on little sandy beaches with no one else even on the island, let alone on the beach!
Around the back of the furthest island (Shute Island), the water was quite choppy where two tidal flows met. We were debating whether or not to carry on round while sheltering in the lee of some rocks, when a little head popped up in front of us.
We had no idea what creature it could be. It popped it's head out above the water like a seal might, but it was only about the thickness of my arm. We decided to go through the rough stuff in order to gain the sheltered waters of the far side of the island. Once back on the calm water another head popped up to say hi - this time we were much closer and could easily identify that it was a turtle! It was a big one too, with a shell about 70-80cm in length. It floated along next to us for a bit, craned its neck up for some air and the dived down, out of sight, into the blue. Neither of us had seen one before, so it was a real magic moment to share. Shortly afterwards, we found a private beach to picnic on, made entirely of broken coral pieces.
We then pressed on around the island and weaved our way back through the sheltered water between Tancred and Repair Islands and back up to the docks.
Before leaving the harbour, we made arrangements with the kayak guy and the water taxi firm to take us out to Whitsunday Island tomorrow morning for an overnight trip. After all this, there was still time to check out the nearby town of Airlie Beach, (which to be honest was just a row of tacky tourist shops, 'happy hour' backpacker bars and booking agents for island trips), and get back to the campsite to lounge in the last of the sun and start re-packing. Mega day.
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