Kathleen
Fitzroy Island, Australia – the Reef – May 15-19, 2016
From Darwin, we flew back to the East Coast and to Queensland for the first time. It is the last province that we haven’t seen in Australia.
We flew to Cairns and then immediately took the boat to Fitzroy Island, which is a short 45-minute ferry ride. We had been looking forward to seeing the Great Barrier Reef for our entire trip. We got into the island in the afternoon and took a short hike to a lovely natural beach a bit away from the resort. The island is a national park and the small resort is really the only thing on the island. We are still here on the island as I write this and we have enjoyed a fabulous several days enjoying the beaches, hiking to the summit of the park, and, of course, snorkeling.
The weather hasn’t been perfect and there were some storms before we arrived which stirred up the water so visibility wasn’t great. We waited a day to do the snorkeling and got a window on the second day. The reef here is amazing. We have done some really nice snorkeling in our time, but we have never seen live coral that came close to even 10% of what is here. Multicolored, shaped and sized coral swaying gently in the waves with scores of fish swimming in between….lovely! We got two excellent snorkels in and have had such a lovely time that it will be a bit sad to catch the fairy back to the mainland tomorrow.
Lovely time on Fitzroy and we are looking forward to some more reef experiences as we head up the coast for the next five days.
