Chance Bay (with a stroll to Whitehaven Beach)

[Kyle]We wrapped up our Internet stuff a little earlier than anticipated and so decided to head east to Chance Bay, at the southeastern tip of triangular Whitsunday Island. We were both itching to go for a hike. Mahana had just been there and told us about the trail from Chance Bay to Whitehaven Beach, where we could take in the show.

Moving home again, and the sun came out to play (although some of the hills were still capped with cloud)

Whitehaven Beach is by far the most popular spot in the Whitsundays. If you have ever seen a travel brochure or one of those posters they put in jetways featuring the Whitsundays, you have likely seen this beach. We think it’s funny because it gives a skewed view of the area.

Most people, when they think of what is typically Whitsundays, think of pearl-white beaches and azure-blue water. In fact, as we have said before, most of the Whitsundays is made up of steep granite islands topped with forests that go right down to rocky shorelines. It looks like Maine or the Pacific Northwest or Scotland. Whitehaven Beach is pretty much the only place that doesn’t look like that, but it’s the one everybody knows.

As such, it gets a lot of attention. Every helicopter and boat tour leaving out of Hamilton Island makes a beeline for Whitehaven as their first and sometimes only stop. Boatloads of people are landed for a day of splashing, picnicking and baking in the sun.

{Maryanne: Whitehaven beach is beautiful, with shallow swirling sands extending from the inlets and channels at each end of a 7km long white-sand beach. The sand is really special too in that no other beaches in the area have this especially white sand, and it has the quirk of not getting hot in the sun, so is easy (no pleasantly cool) to walk on whatever the baking sun has to throw at you. All this is best viewed from on high of course, and thankfully the national parks provide trails with viewpoints to do just that. Unfortunately we wouldn't make it to the northerly end of the beach (Hill Inlet), which is the one on all the brochures, but we would still be able to at least visit the beach and get a viewpoint from the southern end.}

Chance Bay, on the opposite side of the south-east corner, is much more diminutive and sedate. It offers better protection from the prevailing winds and, of course, still allows access to Whitehaven Beach via a modest trail between the two.

When we arrived, there were a handful of other boats anchored in Chance bay. Most were clearly charterers who were making brief stops to break up their trips to and from Whitehaven, probably waiting out the change of tide to have the current in their favor through the narrow gap between Whitsunday Island and Haslewood Island (The Solway Passage).

We landed the dinghy and joined the trail and were surprised not to see another person until we got to the junction between it and a smaller loop trail that runs from Whitehaven to a few viewpoints and then back down to the sand. We noticed that even more people than usual were climbing barefoot, as you see pretty regularly in Australia. Almost all of this same contingent were clad in swimming gear and clearly were more setup for walking on soft sand than rocks and twigs.

Parking the dinghy and hitting the trails...

It was at this point that we also came across a handful of goannas (lace monitor lizards) ambling up or across the trail with no apparent worry about us. The biggest one was maybe just over a meter long and seemed quite happy to fall in step with us.

At the viewpoints, we got high views of the craggy inlets of both Whitsunday and adjacent Haslewood Islands. We also got our first views of the broad sweep of 7km (four-mile-long) Whitehaven Beach. It really is a very nice beach. Almost the whole length of the bay there was filled with boats more densely packed than back at Chance Bay. Most were tour boats, followed by charterers and then private vessels. There was even a mega-yacht there with a three-story water slide running from the top deck. It was a bit of a madhouse, but since the beach is so long, there was plenty of real estate that wasn’t being taken up by beach blankets.

Enjoying the views, and braving the beach crowds!

We went down to the water just long enough to say that we had been there and then retreated to the relative peace and quiet of Chance Bay.

Returning to peaceful Chance Bay

Here is a cracker of a view of the northern end of Whitehaven Beach (Hill Inlet), you can see what everyone gets excited about. It wasn't taken by us, but you can purchase this online at Salty Wings