Today (well actually about a week ago) we moved onto Hamilton Island in the Whitsunday Islands, Queensland. Getting here involved a 2 hour flight from Sydney to Hamilton Island. Originally, we thought we’d be staying in Airlie Beach but after a little mis-understanding in our booking plans, we ended up actually on this island paradise.
It was an easy flight north over Brisbane and Gympie (love that name) . This involved flying high above the remains of ex-Cyclone Alfred which had caused a lot of damage in the area. However, today it wasn’t even really very bumpy. Phew.
As we flew into the island we had excellent views and as we got off the plane the heat and humidity hit us. We’d arrived in the tropics for sure! It’s only a small airport and we were soon collecting our bags and meeting our young rep Sienna.
There are hardly any full-sized vehicles on Hamilton Island, which is v small and so everyone drives around in golf buggies. Our holiday home came with its own golf buggy and now was the time for me to learn to drive it. Whoopee! I’ve never driven a golf buggy before and my only experience of something similar was we rented some sort of buggy in Malta for a day. Those were really difficult to drive, turn and brake smoothly. Luckily, these were much better and you could turn them on a sixpence.
Sienna put all our bags on her buggy and we went off in convoy upto our apartment at No 7 Compass Point. The cleaners were still sorting out and so we decided to go back down to the harbour and do a bit of shopping for our self catering stay. We discovered the marvellous IGA supermarket. We had a lovely time exploring the aisles of this emporium looking at all the exotic things that we could put in our trolley. Apples, tomatoes, bread, cereals, water, Heinz Baked Beans and dried chicken noodle soup! What a treat we were going to have. The only thing missing was booze! The friendly lady said we needed to go right next door to see Hamish in the ‘Bottle O’. Here we got our selves a cold bottle of rose and a few Lashes beers.
The view over the harbour from the IGA is picture perfect with the most incredible turquoise blue water I think I’ve ever seen. There are some pretty tasty super yachts in the harbour too. However, now it was time for us to whizz backup to our apartment in the buggy. My face hurt from smiling so much at the joy of driving about!
Upon arrival at our apartment I could not believe the result that Jane had got us here. Our apartment was huge and mostly newly refurbished. The lounge had massive sliding doors that lead out onto a decked area overlooking the fabulous palms and gumtrees and down to the water. It soon started raining again but we could sit on the deck undercover and chill for the first time in a while. It was so peaceful with just the chatter of birds which turned out to be our friendly group of Cockatoos. The sign said not to encourage them by feeding them but clearly the French folk upstairs didn’t understand this as at one point they had 3 lined up on their balcony!
A little later we relented and came inside to the cool air conditioning and my mind started to wander towards tea. We ordered a pizza online and then I jumped in the buggy to go and fetch it. Always a pleasure, never a chore! The most surreal thing happened as I got to the end of our lane when I stopped to look right before I turned out. There was a small creature staring right back at me and I’d never seen one of these before. I found myself saying out loud ‘Oh hello. What are you? And what are you doing here?’ . It was in fact the big cute eyes of a wallaby but before she had time to reply, she bounced off across the road. Unbelievable and just wait until I tell Jane what she’d missed.
Apart from that, the trip to fetch the pizza was uneventful and we had a relaxing evening inside before it was time for bed.
Where shall we go to next? 
Fabuloso! But no pictures of the big-eyed creature……..xx