Whitsunday Island, Queensland, Australia

The Whitsunday Islands are a group of 74 islands that lie off the coast of Queensland, Australia and form part of the Great Barrier Reef. The islands are one of the most popular Australian tourist destinations. The vast majority of islands are designated national parks and major attractions include access to coral reefs for snorkeling and diving, pristine beaches, especially Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island and clear aquamarine warm waters. They are well connected by two major airports on Hamilton Island and the mainland town of Proserpine. Over half a million visitors come to the Whitsundays each year.

The name comes from Captain James Cook, the first European to navigate the east coast of Australia, when he sailed here on 4 June in 1770. He was struck by the area's beauty and named the island after the day he thought it was - "Whit Sunday", the seventh Sunday after Easter, in the Christian calendar. It later turned out his calendar was wrong, it was not Whit Sunday, but the name has stuck. From looking around you can see many expensive yachts sailing about, the playground for Sydney's rich and Queensland's property developers. For those who are still saving for their own yacht, many different ferry companies operate from Airlie to bring people on daytrips around the sights. A typical daytrip might include a visit to Whitehaven beach, a trip to a part of reef for some snorkeling and a prepared lunch. Most islands do not have places to stay, since they are protected national parks. But for the more adventurous an enormous choice of camping sites dot every island, where nobody else will come.

Before tourism could make money, the Whitsundays were used for logging. Aboriginal people had traditionally used the trees here for timber, which might account for references in Captain Cook's diary about grasslands when he first came here. White settlers did the same, after the Aboriginal population had dwindled away through European diseases and bloodshed. Nowadays, there is no visible trace of logging ever having happened in the Whitsundays (except for the old dam that was used by the sawmill on Sawmill Creek in Cid Harbour Whitsunday Island), although on Hook there are two clues of previous industry. One is that at the Nara inlet there are Aboriginal cave paintings. This can be accessed by boat, either on private charter (bareboating) or on one of the backpacker sailing yachts who sometimes stop in. The second is that on Hook Island(and on some other islands) you may hear bleating in the forest. Goats were introduced by the colonialists so that ship wreck survivors could find food and later so that loggers could have something to hunt in the event that food ran out.