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After our stint in Sydney, we headed north to the Whitsunday Islands in northeast Queensland. My sister works at Club Med on Lindeman Island there. Over the past four years or so, many of our family vacations have ended up being wherever she's working at the time (Florida and Colorado before this), so it's not so much of a vacation for her but it's good to have the whole family together. Our plane landed in the morning on Hamilton Island and we had a few hours to kill before we caught the ferry to Lindeman. On my sister's recommendation, we made our way to the animal park there, mostly to see the Koalas.
Holding and getting her picture taken with Willy (the Koala above) was definitely one of the highlights for Cousin Lindsay. After that, we made our way to the bakery by the marina for some Australian pastries, which Lindsay had been researching all over Sydney. We sat outside with a few friendly cockatoos until it was time to walk back to the dock and ride the ferry for a half an hour.
Meghan greeted us with the Club Med wave at the dock, and after the quick tour of the village we started eating and drinking and didn't stop for the next five days. Now I know how our cats feel, scheduling everything around when we're going to eat next.
The next day we ferried back to Hamilton Island ("Hamo," as we learned the locals called it) to sail around the islands for the day. We had a great captain who took us north from Hamo to a nice quiet bay where we went ashore and took a short hike to a great little beach. We spent about an hour exploring the island and seeing what little things we could find running around in the shallow water. The sand was some of the strangest that I've ever felt; it was muddy and almost sticky, but didn't really cloud the water. It was actually quite comfortable to walk through.
The rest of our few days on Lindeman were spent hiking, relaxing and playing sports like golf, tennis, archery, and other sports that none of us really know much about. Of course, this didn't prevent us from cleaning up at the sports awards ceremony on Thursday night. I shared the golfing medal for "Most Improved" with Lindsay, Maura got the yoga medal because she was the only one who had showed up the previous day, and my Dad took two medals - one for archery and the second for most consistent golfer because they couldn't award one for "worst golfer." All of our golf medals were simply because we made friends with the instructor, a Boston area native and a big Red Sox fan. Plus, we were some of the only guests whose names he knew.
We ended most nights with dinner and the nightly show, which was anything from a kids show to full acrobatics. Yes, the picture below is my sister working, and no, the photo hasn't been rotated.
After the show, the Club Med staff ("G.Os") would lead most everybody in the nightly Crazy Signs, or choreographed dances. I usually made a beeline for the bar at that point, although as the picture below shows I did get into it by the pool on our last day there. My excuse is probably just that it was only 11:30 and the pool bar wasn't open yet.
After Lindeman, it was back to Sydney for one more night and then Maura and I headed to Tasmania for the last leg of the trip.
Here's the one big group picture that I got on the top of Mt. Oldfield, the highest point on Lindeman Island.
Jerad posted this in Travel | Comments (2)
Willy called. He misses me, which really isn't surprising. He told me that the Hunter Valley is running a fire sale on everything...which really means that the region PAYS YOU to go sample its WINE, food, fudge, candy, condiments and whatever else you can think of to experience for free. Not a bad gig. I think we should go back. You and Cousin-in-law Maura don't have anything major coming up in the states in the next 6 month (in the states, at least), do you? I don't want to let Willy down, so I'm pretty sure I should go back.
Posted by: Cousin Lindsay at August 31, 2007 01:08 AM
Nope, nothing important going on here. When Willy called me last night (he still doesn't understand the time difference), he told me that he'd cleared out a nice tree and has a plate full of eucalyptus waiting for us. I think then he fell asleep mid-sentence on the phone. Lazy koala.
Posted by: Cousin Jerad at August 31, 2007 11:19 AM
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