Whitehaven Beach and Hill Inlet Speedboat Day with Lunch Airlie Beach

Whitehaven Beach

Whitehaven Beach stretches for about seven kilometres along the eastern side of Whitsunday Island, the largest island of the Whitsundays, inside Whitsunday Islands National Park. Its sand is almost pure silica, so fine and white that it squeaks underfoot and stays cool even in the midday sun, and the water in the shallows glows in shades of turquoise.

On this Whitehaven Beach tour from Airlie Beach, you land on the beach for time to swim, walk along the shore and take photos, and to enjoy a buffet picnic lunch with salad, prawns, a meat platter, wraps, bread rolls and fruit salad. There are no shops or buildings on the island, which keeps the beach as natural as it was centuries ago. It is regularly named among the most beautiful beaches in the world, and seeing it in person explains why.

Hill Inlet Lookout

At the northern end of Whitehaven Beach, Hill Inlet is a tidal inlet where the tide moves the white sand and the clear water into ever-changing swirls of white, turquoise and deep blue. The best way to see it is from the lookout at Tongue Point, reached by a short walking track through the forest, which looks down over the whole inlet.

You spend about an hour at the Hill Inlet lookout area, with time to walk up, enjoy the view and take some of the most photographed images in Australia. The patterns are different every day and change with the tide, and at low tide they are especially striking. Your crew explains how the inlet formed and how the sand and water move, so this stop is often the highlight of the trip for photographers.

Snorkelling the fringing reefs of the Great Barrier Reef

The Whitsunday Islands lie within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, the largest coral reef system in the world. Around the islands are fringing reefs, coral gardens that grow close to the shore in calm, clear water, which makes them ideal for snorkelling even for beginners.

Your first stop of the day is a sheltered snorkelling site where you spend about an hour in the water. The crew provides masks, snorkels, fins, flotation devices such as pool noodles and life jackets, and full-body stinger suits during the stinger season from November to May. You may see hard and soft corals, colourful reef fish, giant clams and sometimes turtles. You need to be able to swim and follow basic safety instructions to snorkel.

Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands

Airlie Beach is the gateway to the Whitsundays, a lively seaside town on the Queensland coast with a swimming lagoon, a palm-lined waterfront and marinas from which most island trips depart. The Ngaro people are the traditional owners of the islands, and their history in the region goes back thousands of years.

A speedboat is the fastest way to reach Whitehaven Beach and Hill Inlet, leaving more time to enjoy each stop than a slower cruise. The best time to visit the Whitsundays is from May to October, with dry, sunny days and calm water, while July to September is humpback whale season, when the whales come north to breed. In summer, from November to May, stinger suits protect you in the water. During wet or windy weather you may get splashed on the boat.