Whitsundays

GPS Track by David Fisher

What a great trip.

Raewyn and Neil, Shaan, Mike, Guy and myself circumnavigated Whitsunday and Hook Islands departing from Shute Harbour in August 2010.

I’ve inserted my gps track so you can see the path that we took in the trip. I’ve also included a couple of side trips, like the circumnavigation of Haslewood Island and the walks up Hill Inlet lookout and Whitsunday Cairn (in blue). The daily kayaking distances were very chillaxed, ranging from none to 24 km.

Day	From	To	Distance
Sunday	Shute Harbour	North Molle	8
Monday	North Molle	Henning	16
Tuesday	Henning	Whitehaven	21
Wednesday	Haslewood circumnavigation		22
Thursday	Whitehaven	Peter Bay	19
Friday	Peter Bay	Hook Is Resort	9
Saturday	Hook Is Resort	Maureen Cove	18
Sunday	Snorkling
Monday	Snorkling
Tuesday	Maureen Cove	Curlew	21
Wednesday	Curlew	South Molle	24
Thursday	South Molle	Shute Harbour	7

		Total trip kilometres	163

Highpoints

The wildlife seen from the kayaks and snorkeling – turtles, whales, rays, colourful fish and coral.
The scenery was excellent. Nice beaches – some sand, some coral.
New experiences for all of us around every corner. None of us had been there before.
A day of headwinds was hard yakka but rewarding as we plugged south to Henning Island
A day of following winds as I carved up the waves heading north to Maureen Cove
The chilled out pace of the trip meant we all could soak up some downtime from our usual lives.
And we could blow off some energy paddling too.
I also really enjoyed my food – preparing, eating and sharing it.

Food

: David with pizza

I decided early on to take my Outback Oven so I then spent a lot of time planning a menu to ensure that I utilised the oven on the trip rather than only use it once or twice. We had a number of planned non-paddling days so I thought I’d get plenty of time for baking. At first, the planned oven baking efforts focussed on desserts but I tried to come up with a few main course options too. By the time I’d decided on my menu, my baking meals were:

a loaf of bread with pumpkin soup
another loaf bread for the hell of it
shepherds pie
pizza with the pizza base made from scratch
triple choc muffins – 2 batches
rich choc muffins – 1 batch
biscuits for morning tea one day
sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce

David about to tuck into fresh bread and pumpkin soup (Photo by Guy)

Then there was the pièce de résistance dessert, chocolate fondue and, again, I made it from scratch – cream and chocolate heated together with fresh rock melon, bananas, dried apple and marshmallows dipped in.

Click to go to the photo album. When in the photo album, click F11 to toggle in and out of full screen mode. Click the arrow to start the slideshow.