Whitsunday Islands, Queensland, Australia - Pristeen!

I've spent the past couple of years now travelling round some of the most noisy, populated and polluted parts of the world. So it was with absolute glee I found myself in an area pretty close to being totally unspoilt. Imagine having breakfast on the boat, watching the sun rise above you and the HUGE sea turtles rise for air to the side of you. (They are the white blobs in the top pic!).

The wildlife was great - sea eagles; reef sharks; dolphins; fish etc.

At night, the sky was ablaze with stars. And I managed to see at least 4 or 5 shooting stars everynight. I've taken it to several places before, but this was the first time I've used my Celestron Skyscout properly -- a kind of binocular crossed with a GPS enabled telescope -- it guides you to constellations and then gives you an audio lecture on what you're looking at. Hours of entertainment!

The beach you see me standing on is regularly polled as one of the world's top 5 beaches - it's Whitehaven beach on Whitsunday Island. The sand is 100% silica which means it's tremedously fine and powdery (imagine a beach covered in self raising flower) - trouble is, the fine grains get everywhere and are a nightmare to get rid of (cameras are regularly ruined on the beach apparently). We were warned by the skipper to shower ourselves off properly before returning to the boat - which we thought we had done. Never-the-less, he swept up two dust-pans of sand from the boat.

M