The Islands - the first

The whitsunday's...

The fine, white sand stretches as far as you can see to the right and to the left. It is so white that it almost dazzles the eye. Above, the palm trees move languidly in the light breeze that runs along the beach coming from the ozean. The crystal clear water shimmers light turquoise close to the beach and slowly turns into deeper blue when the eye sways to the horizon. It is possible to observe some fish whilst walking along the beach but the dark stretches of coral just three meters off the shore promise much more staggering views. Suddenly, the lound blowing of a whale shooting a water fountain into the air disrupts the absolute calm of the place. About 50m of the beach, the mother whale with her little one play around in the current for a couple of minutes before they decide to let themselves be drifted off into deeper waters. After a while they dive, turn up in front of the beach again and repeat their game. It seems to be their only occupation for the afternoon....

If I tell you now that this is where we put up our tent for four days - are you going to be mad at me? South Molle Island, one of the smaller Islands of the Whitsunday Group was our way of avoiding the regular touristy way of exploring the region: buying a 4-day tour on a yacht together with about 20 other people and being very poor afterwards. We found a nice little boat that took us over to the island and dropped us right on paradis beach with enough water to survive for four days. And there we were: laying in the sun, snorkling in the crystal clear waters, hiking all over the beach, star-gazing at night, ..., and all this basically all alone because there were only three other camper families there. It was truely paradise, especially when the whales turned up or when we went out snorkeling and saw the most beautifully colored and shaped fishes!

But of course, even South Molle Island is part of dangerous Australia and we encountered some more animal friends in our paradise. After two days of sorrowfree snorkling we woke up on the third morning, seeing our French neighbors running out of the water after only a couple of minutes. Why? They had seen Jellyfish (Quallen), which, as everything in this country, are life-threatening with their poison. You have about 20-30 minutes till your heart stops when you get toughed by them. So we thought we'd just hike to the other side of the island and go snorkling there. The advantage was that while hiking we had more than enough time to revise all first aid procedures which resulted in me being really relaxed when arriving at the deserted beach and getting into the water without any worries at all!

While getting prepared, I saw a small grey fin cutting the surface of the water... doubts....no, that was just impossible. There couldn't be any sharks in the water that close to the beach. So I told David there was a fun fish in the water pretending to be a shark and he just laughed and went into the water. About 3 seconds and one underwater look to the left later, he came running back telling me there was a shark in the water!!! How comforting! So now I was to go snorkling with a shark and jellyfish in the water and still remain relaxed. All right, let's do it the Australian way: easy mate, no worries! There we go... but just for about 5 minutes before we saw the first jellyfish ourselves and rushed back to the coast.

But of course, events like that cannot discourage us anymore, now that we are Australian wildlife prooven, so we decided to do some rockclimbing and get to some other beaches well of the beaten tracks to do snorkling there. Having a lot of fun scambling around the rocks, we thus reached the most beautiful sandbeach you can imagine and in the shallow waters we were able to watch some rays (Rochen) for quite a while before they got scared! Of course we tried to go snorkling again but were also frightened out of the water by more jellyfish.

When the sun dropped low, we figured it would be best to start our way back and off we went, on the rocks again. This time, however, we had not climbed for more than three minutes when I saw a long grey snake run between David's feet! Hmpf! As we did not have a choice, we moved on along the rocks, only to meet another nice spicimen of the same kind 5 minutes later... In the end, we saw three greyish brown snakes and one black and yellow, which was just 10 cm from where David put his hand while climbing up a rock. Of course we later found out that this one was a snake with deadly poison but with our luck we should have know that the minute we saw it!

To round the day up, when we got back to the campground, our French friends told us that they had run into a saltwater crocodile only about 500m away from the camp. So: jellyfish, shark, snakes, croco... for me that was enough to get a little worried about our security on our paradise island! But fortunately, the next day was supposed to be our departure day from the island. Or at least so we thought.

The idea was that the boat was to come in on high tide around 1pm and pick us up. Well, 1pm, no one there. 2pm, no one there but... no worries mate! 2.30pm, decending water, no one there, Angi starting to get worried. I finally called the guy from the boat service but no one answered the phone. 3pm, still no one there and water decending faster. We start to calculate how long we can survive on 2 carrots and 10 liters of water... 4pm, still no one there and first plans are developed on how to get to the Resort hotel on the other side on the island... Finally, at 4.30pm the boat shows up and we, after having to wade out there with our equipment as there was not enough depth left, were able to leave our beautiful island and get back to the mainland.

We figured that having been stranded on an island of the Whitsunday group was not the worst that can happen to you but the next time, we'll still bring some extra ratios of food!