This is what you can do with a billion dollars. Own your own private island with an airport,
zoo, bowling alley, golf course, water sports, fine dining and world class
resort. Some Australian founded and then
sold Rosemont Winery, the largest winery in Australia.
This is a beautiful tropical island with a first class
marina. We anchored off shore and took a
20 minute tender ride to reach the marina.
It was sunny, hot and steamy, and we were lucky because it had rained
for three straight days prior to our arrival.
After hearing from the local excursion person, we decided to take the
free shuttle bus, with wonderful A/C, that drove around the island, a sort of
mini-excursion with the driver providing colorful commentary. Six thousand people live here, 1,200 work
here, some commute from the mainland, and the rest are tourists or vacationers.
This is an incredibly beautiful place with condos and
vacation homes. The view of the
Whitsunday Islands and the Mainland was breathtaking. Everywhere we looked, there was lush tropical
foliage neatly maintained. Worker
cottages were discretely tucked away in the bush. The resort and swimming beach was on the
other side of the island so when we reached it, we decided to get off the
shuttle and see the rest of the island later.
A little while later, it was time to go to the beach. This part of Australia has lovely beaches,
warm water and stingers! Stingers are poisonous
jelly fish. They are in season now and
it is recommended to swim in water where there is a net enclosure and to wear a
full length stinger suit. It defeats the
purpose of going in the water. We saw
several people in the water and thought it was safe to go in. The water was like a bathtub; it was almost
too warm. We wadded out and wadded some
more and the water finally got up to my knees (this beach had a sandy bottom). It wasn’t even deep enough to get yourself
wet. Father Sean wadded out and we asked
him to bless the water and keep the stingers away. We went back to the pool to get really wet
and cool off.
About this time, everyone started to get hungry. Michael went over to the bar to check things
out and found the average price for an alcoholic drink was $18! We thought resort prices; so we decided to go
back to the little town by the marina where we saw a fish and chips restaurant. Back to the bathroom to change into
clothes. This time, it was even harder
to put on clothes as I could not get dry.
The bathroom obviously was not air conditioned.
We picked up a shuttle bus, which was mercifully cool, and
found out we were on the local. We stopped
at every corner, every worker’s huts, every business. Hungry and hot people get grouchy. We finally made it to the little town,
dropped off our wet towels and headed to the fish and chips restaurant only to
find that there was no A/C, it was dirty, they were out of cooked food and the
prices were astronomical. It would cost
$29 for one person. Add a drink, double
that for two and the price for a crummy lunch would come to $75!! They have special, affordable prices for the
locals; the tourists get soaked and support the community. By this time, we were all hot, crabby and
hungry so we decided we could get a good hamburger for the price of a tender
ride back to the ship. And that is what
we did.
We would have loved to jump into the pool, but the pool was
closed. It was gross looking. The ship pumps in sea water, filters and
treats it. In this case, they had pumped
in water that contained algae and while it was safe, it was disgusting to even
think about going in. The ship was not
able to get rid of the algae water until we were out to sea.
We had showers in order to (1) get clean, but more
importantly to (2) cool off. Michael
went to play bridge and I worked on the blog.
Later in the evening, we dined under the stars for a magical end to a
very nice day.
No comments:
Post a Comment