Aussie Holiday: Long Island

After leaving Fraser Island, we were headed for Long Island in the Whitsundays. This was a little too far to drive all in one day, so it was split into two days. We crossed over the Tropic of Capricorn and stayed in a small campground. The main attraction here was the Capricorn Caves. You could go on a two-hour caving adventure through them and up to the top of the mountain, or you could just do a one-hour walkthrough of the bigger caverns. I had recently done a more spectacular caving adventure in Waitomo, so I took the opportunity to organise my life and repack my backpack (we had only been allowed one small bag on Fraser Island, so I had to consolidate my clothes again). There wasn’t much else besides large insects at this stop, but we did see some more wild kangaroos, including one mother with a joey.

The next morning we finished our drive to Airlie Beach, the port to catch our ferry to Long Island. We had picked up two more passengers in Surfer’s Paradise, Zoe and Catherine, and we picked up one more in Airlie Beach, Leanne. This was the largest our group at any point, but it didn’t stay that way for long. About half of the group, eight people, left for a two-day two-night cruise around the Whitsundays. Instead of doing this cruise, I stayed at the Long Island Resort. We relaxed that night at the island bar (long islands on Long Island) before crashing out.

The next day, some of us had booked on to a day cruise around the islands. We met our ferry at 7.45am, and it took us to the dock where we met Camira, our 85ft bright purple retired racing catamaran. Everything was included on this cruise: morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, drinks, stinger suits, and snorkelling equipment. We visited Whitehaven Beach, often called the most beautiful and pristine beach in the world, and another snorkelling cove. We didn’t have very good weather in the early morning. It was overcast, and as we made our way around some of the islands, it began to pour. This ended up being OK because the crew put on Finding Nemo and brought us inside for talks about snorkelling and the coves we were going to visit. The weather had cleared up entirely by the time we got to Whitehaven Beach, and we had fine weather for the rest of the day. It was even nice enough that us girls laid out on the nets strung between the fins of the catamaran to enjoy the warm sunshine and stay cool with the air rushing below us.

We spent the next day relaxing on the island. We were originally planning on taking out the free kayaks out on the water, but by the time we checked on them, they had already been taken out for the day. We compromised and hung out by the pool instead, taking advantage of the swim-up bar and café. One interesting thing did happen poolside. I was the first one from my group out there because I couldn’t sleep, and once I was awake I didn’t want to waste sunlight. There were about seven girls, roughly university age, taking up the next chairs down, and they all sounded distinctly American to me. Once I heard them mention ‘spring break,’ I got really interested and started trying to figure out where they were from (especially because I thought it was quite early to have a spring break). Later on, when they were getting ready to go back for a nap, I saw a girl walk by me wearing a University of Georgia t-shirt! These girls were all UGA students over in New Zealand and Australia on a study abroad. (In case you’re a reader not from the USA, Georgia Tech – my home university – is a rival of UGA, and we’re both state universities in Georgia.) It was even cooler because the girl in the t-shirt was actually the roommate of Emily, a girl who was on the GT study abroad in Wellington (we travelled together to Rotorua). I travelled all the way around the world just to run into a group of girls from my same area.

This was the last night that the entire Connections group was together. Two of the girls who had been with us from the beginning were ending their tour (they were only doing an 11-day tour, Sydney to Long Island), so we took our group photo and had our celebrations that night. There were 16 of us plus our driver and hostess. We enjoyed the pool, hung out on the beach at sunset, and did karaoke one final time (we did that fairly often throughout the trip). The next morning we got up early to catch our ferry, dropped the girls off in Airlie Beach, and headed north again to Cairns.