Monday 4th September 2023
Today is our last day in the Whitsunday Islands. We enjoy a lovely morning at Maureen Cove, at the north of Hook Island. Maureen’s Cove is a renowned snorkelling site with easy access from the coral beach. It boasts an array of underwater valleys and caves, and abundant marine life including giant Maori Wrasse and Manta Rays, which unfortunately we didn’t see any of them.

After breakfast we head for a walk up the creek through a butterfly haven to a cave. This was walking through the dry creek bed over small rocks. As we continue it becomes bigger rocks and then boulder hopping and clambering. It was a fun and challenging walk. Along the way we saw a flutter of butterflies. As we disturbed them they all took off together and fluttered further up the dry creek bed. As always they were very difficult to capture. At the end of the creek we came to a small cave with many, many wasp nests inside. We then walked back again to the beach, as we were trying to squeeze as much in our day as possible. We packed up all our belongings and packed the kayak except for our snorkel gear. We then had a short snorkel out with a boat tour. They were a snorkelling a little bit further away in the deeper coral and having their support dinghy gave me a little more confidence to head over further from the beach. We saw some beautiful fish including some colourful parrotfish, a trumpet fish, many angel fish and a variety of other fish. We then headed back to shore to put the final touches on our packing and we were ready by 11.20am in time for a 11.30am-1.30pm pick-up.

We waited until about 1.15pm under the trees for the boat to arrive and then enjoyed a boat ride to Steen’s Beach, Crayfish Beach, then headed around the west side of the islands to South Molle and then back to Shute Harbour. We have had a fantastic adventure over the last five days, we have seen some amazing green sea turtles, an abundant variety of fish, coral and clams, met some lovely people, paddled through some amazing bays with incredible cliff-faces, rocky boulders and vegetation, plus the most fantastic crystal clear blue waters. What an amazing time we have had.

We have checked in to a cabin at the Tasman Tourist Park for 2 nights to recover, plan and reset ourselves for the next stage of our trip.

4L water today