There are few overseas destinations that can match this paradise

For a retreat that recommends its guests do little but relax and eat in pavilions looking out across the famed blue waters of the Whitsundays, I can’t catch a break at Qualia.

I’m flying out from Hamilton Island (Qualia is built on the northern tip of Hamilton Island) by helicopter, via Australia’s most internationally iconic beach, Whitehaven Beach, for a private tour of Heart Reef, a 100-square-metre patch of coral shaped like a heart, located within an enormous lagoon created at low tide along the Great Barrier Reef. After a 40-minute flight, I land on a helipad on top of a pontoon in the middle of the ocean, then take a glass-bottomed jet boat around the lagoon to snorkel with turtles trapped temporarily by the tide. There’s no-one around me for more than 50 kilometres in any direction.

Whitehaven Beach is even more spectacular from above.

Few destinations offer the scale of iconic luxury experiences as The Whitsundays. When the pandemic kept Australia’s luxury travellers within our borders for almost two years, it was here they flocked to. Qualia and nearby Hayman Island Resort were booked solid for months at a time.

Many guests come for the day spa or the restaurant but there’s far too much going on for me to sit still long enough for a full-body exfoliation and a five-course, three-hour lunch.

Next morning I take a 10-minute ferry to Hamilton Island Golf Club, the only golf course in Australia built on its own island. I tee off across a ridge into a steep valley – this island, Dent Island, is more of a rugged, rocky monolith than your typical tropical island. Built across 1000 hectares of uninhabited elevated land, Hamilton Island Golf Club is one of the most challenging and spectacular courses on the planet. The back nine holes are built along a series of ridges and valleys to the island’s south, with the Coral Sea directly below my feet. At the end of the round, I count the golf balls I lose over a lunch at a clubhouse looking south to Long Island.

Hamilton Island Golf Club is the only course in Australia built on its own island.

And there’s fishing: a destination with 74 islands has a lot of good fishing spots. The Whitsundays is one of the best fishing destinations in Australia. The next day I take a day-long charter aboard a 12-metre custom-built fishing launch to the edge of the Great Barrier Reef from a marina just below Qualia. Anglers come from across the world to fish for over 1500 species of catchable fish here, including the grandest prize of all: Black Marlin (I don’t snare myself one).

There are more luxury signature experiences beyond Hamilton Island. I make my way by helicopter to Hayman Island Resort, 35 kilometres north. First developed by aviation pioneer Reginald Ansett in 1950, generations of travellers have been coming here since. Built across the island’s south coast beside a horseshoe-shaped bay looking across to the green peaks of Hook Island, it’s actually the resort’s pool that stands out most from the air. The largest swimming pool in the southern hemisphere, it’s bigger than seven Olympic pools combined, and I can leap right into it from the deck outside my room.

Snorkelling off the Heart Reef pontoon.

There are five restaurants on site since InterContinental spent $135 million redesigning the resort in 2019, but it’s the occasions I spend beyond the resort that are most memorable. At dawn I hike two kilometres behind it, scaling a ridgeline to one of the Whitsundays’ most famous snorkelling spots, Blue Pearl Bay. There’s a small, protected sandy bay here that’s always devoid of people, and it’s easy to swim from the beach to offshore coral gardens where resident (and gigantic) Maori wrasse live. You’ll also get to swim with manta rays which populate the area. And at sunset, I take a 90-minute sunset cruise out from the resort, across to Hook Island to watch the sun set across the mainland in the distance.

Poolside at Qualia.

When the outside world was classified off-limits to all Australian travellers, we flocked to destinations like the Whitsundays. Now the planet’s open again, we still can’t get enough of our own icons.

THE DETAILS

Fly

Fly direct to Hamilton Island with Qantas, Virgin or Jetstar.

Stay

Stay in one of 60 hillside pavilions at Qualia, see qualia.com.au

Stay at Hayman Island Resort, see haymanisland.intercontinental.com

Stay in Airlie Beach at Coral Sea Resort with views across the Whitsundays, see coralsearesort.com

Play

Play Australia’s most picturesque golf course, see hamiltonislandgolfclub.com.au; greatgolfaustralia.com.au

Take a helicopter tour to Heart Reef, see qualia.com.au

Catch your dream fish with Quest Angling Expeditions, see questangling.com.au

More

queensland.com

signatureexperiences.australia.com

The writer travelled courtesy of Great Golf Courses Of Australia and Tourism and Events Queensland