Friday 1st November - Tuesday 5th November 2013

We left extremely early on Friday morning, due to the prices for flights from Cairns to Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays, we decided it was cheaper to drive to Airlie Beach to get the ferry across!

We pretty much drove straight through, stopping at Tully to see the giant gumboot, which shows the amount of rainfall that fell in 1950, 7.9m in the year!!

We stopped once more at Townsville for lunch before driving all the way to Airlie Beach. Townsville was very hot and dry! While I found Airlie Beach fairly backpacker-esque! We dropped our bags off while the boys took the car to the hire shop. It was a pretty close call, but they made it to the boat in time! We had a relaxing journey, compared to the drive, to the Island. There was a lot of school kids on board which made me realise that locals actually lived on the island as well as tourists! Ant came down and picked us up in the golf buggy. The first trip was me and the bags, the buggy really struggled up the hill...but we made it luckily! Lant went back to get the others, but Lant and Mark had to push the buggy up the hill as the battery had died!! I was glad it didn't happen to Ant and I with the bags!

The apartment was lovely with amazing views from the balcony to the sea and surrounding islands! The sea was literally a gorgeous blue turquoise colour, what you would see in the postcards! The island itself was very resort like, with everyone driving around golf buggies. Cars weren't allowed on the island, only very few we here.

We decided to go and have a meal at the resort side, we caught the shuttle bus (I refuse to climb these hills!!) I got a steak with bugs (kind of like mini lobster tails, very yummy!) We went back to the villa for drinks and card games!

We had booked to go on the canoe trip on the Saturday but due to the bad weather yesterday the swell was a bit too high, so instead we did the speed boat trip! This was possibly the coolest thing ever! We were bouncing around all over the shop, Stu and I were sat up the front wetting ourselves laughing! I don't think the others enjoyed it as much as we did though.

We stopped at one of the beaches which has the highest % of silicon sand in the world. It was literally white as snow! We had an hour relaxing on the beach and enjoying the waters and snorkeling before we headed back to Hamilton Island.

I brought myself a strawberry tart! Yum, and several more for the rest of the week! We had lunch back at the apartment where we were joined by a sulphur crested cockatoo. He was charming at first until he flew onto the table, and stole our chips then went about dropping them ALL on the floor and letting the bag blow away in the wind! What a cheeky bird! We enjoyed the evening by watching the sunset at...sunset point with a cocktail. We then had dinner and played more card/board games!

Sunday we did the canoe tour, which was brilliant! We saw so many turtles which was fantastic! Even a little baby one! We canoed round one of the islands and stopping off to walk along the beach before heading all the way back! Stu and I seemed to work well canoeing for once, no arguing like before!!

I had booked myself a massage, due to the stress I've had at work. It was worth it! So relaxed. We had a few drinks round the swim up bar before we headed back to the villa for our last BBQ together!

We had a early afternoon flight back to Melbourne, we said our goodbyes and hopefully we would be seeing them again soon! It was so nice to see friendly faces from back at home. I also hope Ant and Kate now keep up the yearly tradition of visiting us wherever we have been in the world! We didn't get any free upgrades this time but the flight was pleasant enough and we landed back to cold Melbourne!