Tuesday 12th September 2023
We have had a lovely time on Great Keppel Island. Today the wind is very strong and we are not sure how long we have on the island. If they cancel our 4pm ferry we will have to go on the Freedom Fast Cat at 2.30pm. So we were up and on our walk at 8am. Today we are heading to Mt Wyndham lookout a 178m elevation over a couple of km, so a big hill climb. The views along the way were beautiful of the coastline and the beautiful clear water. It is very windy so there are whitecaps out to sea. We then headed down to Clam Bay which had a very strong onshore wind and a decent swell coming in to the beach. The trail down to Clam Bay was very overgrown with many fallen trees making it a little difficult to find our way. There were many goats along the way.

After a short break at Clam Bay we decided to do a loop back to the Holiday Village rather than follow one of the trails we had already travelled. We walked along Leeke’s Beach which was a beautiful white sandy beach on the western side of the island, so a lot calmer than anywhere else. We then walked around the headland of variegated coloured rocks to Putney Beach. This beach was also a white sandy beach which ended at the Hideaway Resort. The headland that the resort is on has the most enormous sand bags which must have been placed to avoid the resort falling in to the ocean. We have walked 14.36km over 3hrs 50mins this morning.

We then enjoyed lunch at the Holiday Village and then walked along Fisherman’s Beach, around the headland to Shelving Beach. This was one of the sheltered snorkelling spots for today. We had a great 30min snorkel where we sae many beautiful fish, some large parrotfish, some Stripey Snapper, Lemon Damsels, Blackeye Thicklip, Scribbled Angelfish and some of the usual ones we have seen each time. We also spent about 10 mins swimming with a Green Sea Turtle.

We then headed back to the resort and collected our gear for the 4pm ferry. We made the most of our last day on the island. We have really enjoyed the snorkelling and hiking over the last four days. We had a pretty good trip back to the mainland, albeit very lumpy and biog swell. Apparently the trip from the mainland to the island was a lot worse this morning with about 8ft swells. We are staying at Rosslyn Bay again tonight and will be on our way for the long journey home, starting in the morning. Thanks for sharing our travels and we look forward to chatting about it more when we get home. Big hugs to you all.