We hired a small boat from the marina on Hamilton Island and motored out to Henning Island, which took around half an hour as we were pushing against the incoming tide. On the way we saw both dolphins and a large sea turtle. Unfortunately just as we approached the island the steering rod snapped, which resulted in us being stranded on the island for 3 hours. The rental company was very good though, they eventually replaced our boat and doubled our rental time for free. There are definitely  worse places to be stuck as well….

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After Henning, we went to Plum Pudding island to do some fishing, but had no luck, so we moved across to Whitsunday, where we caught a number of Coral Trout and Perch.

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Spent the Australia Day long weekend on Hamilton Island, and from what I hear, managed to escape the rain that hit the rest of the east coast, from Sydney all the way up to Cairns. We had a near perfect day.. snorkelling, swimming and catamaraning off the beach. If anything, I wish it had been a bit windier, as sailing would have been more fun…  

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Tomorrow, if the weather holds, we plan to hire a small motor boat and go exploring around the nearby islands and maybe do some fishing. Finally looking forward to getting some sun after a total lack of summer this year so far.

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I’m in Fiji for 5 days, visiting my wife at her office… her boss was nice enough to give us an Ocean Bure, which is a self contained 1 bedroom cottage with a nice coral beach as its backyard. A storm moved across yesterday, so I ran out and quickly snapped these two pics..

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The weather is much better today as per pic below. I went for a snorkel on the reef a little while ago and was surprised at the variety of tropical fish I saw.

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We left Mission Beach after 2 nights and travelled towards Townsville to catch a 3pm flight back to Sydney. On the way we stopped at South Mission Beach, which is around 5kms from the main Mission Beach.
There was a lot of damage done to this area when a cyclone hit in February, with nearby Dunk Island bearing the brunt.

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 We left Cairns on Friday morning and drove a couple of hours south to Mission Beach. Mission is one of my favourite Nth Qld beaches, its never crowded and has a great tropical feel to it.

 
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We stayed at the Castaway Resort, which is a pretty good position. This was the view from our room.

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I flew up to Cairns to stay for a couple of days before a planned trip to Mission Beach further south.  I stayed at the Shang-ri la hotel, which is right on the water.
As you can see from above pictures, Cairns doesn’t  really have a beach.. its more of a swampy, mudflat visited by the odd crocodile. There are some nice beaches a bit further north, but they require effort and action to get to.. which can be hard to muster in the tropical heat. Cairns Council solution to this was to build their own beach, complete with swimming pool and sand. More Pics

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 The Cairns foreshore wasn’t always like this… In the early 1900′s many people wrote about Cairn’s golden sandy beach.. but shortly after that they started dredging in the area, and the sand was replaced with mud. The Esplanade boardwalk extends for around 400 metres from Cairns Harbour and is a very popular walk.

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Went up to Newcastle to get my new tyres rotated, ended up needing to get my brakes looked at and by the time that was done I couldn’t be bothered driving back to Sydney so I booked into the Crowne Plaza on the Esplanade.

The next morning I went for a walk along the boardwalk, then down to Nobbys Beach (above).

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From there I walked down to Newcastle Baths where there is a small beach and popular surf break.

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I tried to go further down to Bar Beach and Merewether, but the police had closed off the road for some reason. I had a coffee on Newcastle beach (above), then drove back home…

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