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Date: April 2006
Location: Whitsundays, Queensland Australia
Couples, young families and seniors from all corners of the globe sip coffee or enjoy breakfast at a cafe overhanging the azure waters of a palm-fringed harbour.
The high, forested hills of Conway National Park encircle the scene that has a picture-postcard bay cradling three tropical islands as its centrepiece.
We are a short coach ride, or 10km east of the restaurants, nightlife and resort
village atmosphere of downtown Airlie Beach.
This is Shute Harbour, berth place of FantaSea
Cruises, the Whitsundays' largest day cruise company and a world class ferry
operation.
FantaSea offers ecotourism-accredited Reef Sleep accommodation, seasonal whale watching tours and famous Whitehaven Beach cruises, as well as day long visits to Reefworld.
As the name suggests, Reefworld is a giant floating platform on the outer Great
Barrier Reef. The multi-million dollar facility offers many services and ways
and means of enjoying the world's largest living ecosystem; a natural wonder of
biodiversity that's visible from space.
A member of FantaSea's courteous and smartly dressed crew escorts myself and other members of a 125-strong guest list to the boarding ramp of a fast, air-conditioned catamaran. Stepping on board one of FantaSea's power vessels is like entering the first class area of a jet aircraft, and comes complete with a full size bar, open lounge areas, shell and coral displays and a great crew-to-guest ratio.
The catamaran steams through the Whitsunday Islands at around 30 knots. After a short stop at Hamilton Island's bustling harbour, with its nearby airport, we head past fjord-like Gulnare Inlet, which cuts deep into the mountainous heart of Whitsunday Island.
Then it's through Hook Passage with its towering volcanic peaks and rainforest-clad slopes and on to the open water crossing to Hardy Lagoon on the outer reef.
Professional photographers and videographers mingle with those on board while
on the upper deck, extra staff cater to a group of 50 US school students and their
escorts. A network of on-board video monitors deliver underwater footage and a
history of the ecology, biology and geography of the Great
Barrier Reef Marine Park.
The operation runs like clockwork and as safety instructions and information on the local landscape comes to an end, scuba diving instructors begin their briefings
The journey takes a little over 2 hours, and with all the hospitality, beautiful scenery, information and entertainment on offer, time passes quickly.
After disembarking, most guests plunge straight into the different activities while Reef Sleep guests are given a tour of their absolute waterfront accommodation. Reef Sleep is available to a maximum of six guests per night (in four modern, clean bunks and one comfortable double room). The guests share the pontoon for one night stays with a colorful live-aboard crew known affectionately as the "Reef Rats".
Reef Sleep guests are offered champagne with fruit and cheese platters at sunset
followed by a gourmet menu featuring fresh reef fish and the option of sleeping
under a canopy of shooting stars. That's not to mention the extended time for
guided drift snorkelling, scuba diving,
optional helicopter flights, incredible sunsets and underwater chamber viewing
by night. The waters around this last Reefworld feature are floodlit for a short
time at night to reveal some amazing sights. The phosphorescence (emitted by plankton-like
creatures) in the water can be brilliant and on a good visibility night you can
still see the reef wall and there's always squid and nocturnal fish. A beautiful,
twelve-foot spotted eagle ray has been spotted swooping past the window like a
bird.
Still marvelling at tales of Reef Sleep, I make my way towards one of Reefworld's regularly departing semi-submersible rides where a glass-walled chamber glows with green aquatic light. I join a group of delirious school kids and our vessel (with its vegetable oil charged hydraulic propulsion) edges its way carefully along a sheer coral wall.
The scene from FantaSea's semi-sub is something out of this world. In visibility of 25 metres or more, we glide over soft and hard coral gardens in a rainbow of colours. I look up and see "Wally", a beautiful lime green and turquoise patterned Maori wrasse allowing itself to be stroked by a small group of snorkellers. The fish is over 1 metre long and almost as high!
In the distance, under the shade of the pontoon, "George" floats nonchalantly amid a school of giant trevally; "George" being a placid, 2.4 metre Queensland groper!
Along the edges of the coral wall, which drops from being exposed on the surface at low tide, to some 60 metres in depth, giant clams jostle for space with starfish. Clown fish tumble in and out between the rubbery tentacles of fluorescent pink anemones and parrot fish flit back and forth.
The rest of my day is spent snorkelling, diving and tucking into FantaSea's famous buffet lunch.
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