Chalkies Beach and a Classic View of Whitehaven Beach

Bristol Rose anchored off Whitehaven.  Note the rock & roll, pretty typical around these islands.

Chalkies Beach on Haslewood Island is an easy anchorage in white sand.  We can see the bottom in crystal clear water 20 feet (6 metres) below us.  It feels like we've really arrived in the idyllic tropical Whitsundays.  There's the long white sand beach, the over-powering scent of flowering melaleuca trees in the air, the screeching of Rainbow Lorikeets and Cockatoos, people paddle boarding just off the shore, sailors relaxing onboard, and across the bay, an equally inviting but somewhat longer, more crowded white sand beach.

In any other place Chalkies would be deemed magnificent but here, this special spot plays second fiddle to another.  We are watching the tourist boats spill hordes of day trippers on the opposite shore.  Everyone wants to walk along this iconic beach, to check it off their list of gotta sees.  I can't say we are any different.  The fine, powdery silica sand beach stretches seven kilometres along the South East of Whitsunday Island.  It's the truly magnificent Whitehaven Beach.  Soon the white sand is littered with people walking, lying, playing.  It's the classic picture of a fun day at the beach.  But this is the beach dreams of made of; reputed to be the most photographed beach in Australia.   The sand really is that white, the water that blue and that clear.

Tonight we pay the price of anchoring in such natural beauty.  Bristol Rose rocks and rolls all night as the currents move around with the change of tides.  Small price to pay really.