Dunk Island - Great Barrier Reef

From Cairns in a 12 seater light aircraft on a 40 minute flight took us to one of the many islands off Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef - Dunk Island was to be our home over the Christmas Holidays for 2006.

Dunk has its own rain forest, beautiful beaches, fabulous plants and a bit of a mini mountain in the middle ... to climb on cooler days ... as well as its own airstrip. It had been hit by Cyclone Larry earlier in 2006 and had to be closed for three months whilst they had a major tidy up, redecorating, replanting project. This was all to our advantage since everything was spick and span.


















Diane's not great on small aircraft. Having arrived safely and checked out our room it was time for some more of that bubbly stuff!

Then it was time to make sure the sun loungers were in the right place... not bad,

fine...

well maybe a slight adjustment....

Perfect!!

And before we knew it .. Christmas Eve and time for a carol concert on the lawn before dinner, which was lovely, but it didn't feel like Christmas.

This is when you have to admit to missing the family! And we did!

But Father Christmas arrived safely in the morning by water ski and had managed to drop off a few pressies for us.

We amused ourselves in the afternoon by making everyone a special Christmas message.....

posh hats all round....

at dinner time. Wonderful food and great to see families young and old enjoying themselves... we did manage to speak to ours, too!

The first few days on Dunk were spent (sunbathing of course) and finding what was on where and generally exploring....

Then it was Boxing Day and time to start "DOING THINGS" -

First of all a cruise on Calypso out to the Gt Barrier Reef for a day snorkeling and the absolute highlight was to see a sea turtle. We are fortunate to have visited loads of fantastic locations, but this was a first and we were bursting with excitement. Here's some of the images from the day.. photos supplied by the Calypso team as we don't have a waterproof camera. Thank you.

Then, following our circuit of Uluru by motorbike we felt we should do the circumnavigation of Dunk on Jetski... which was fun, once Doug learned how to steer the damn thing!

We then undertook the walk to Muggy Muggy Beach later in the afternoon - which was well worth the effort and a beautiful spot to have all to ourselves for an hour before sundowners.

Next morning the weather was a bit dull, but ideal for the climb to the top of Mt Kootaloo... hard work, but we made it! A bit of a heavy shower on the way cooled us down and then no-one could tell the difference about the nasty damp patches appearing on the T Shirts!

We were supposed to be kayaking in the afternoon, but this was cancelled due to bad weather...

which was just as well since all we were then up for achieving was ... a game of Scrabble!

All in all we achieved some much needed R&R ... it's tiring doing all this travelling.... honest!

A wonderful week, with some disappointing rain showers at the end of the week, but you don't get to be a rain forest without it... so can't complain too much! We left feeling relaxed, with great suntans and looking forward to meeting up with Doug's sister and her husband, Diane and Geoff, in Sydney.

Geoff's birthday on 31st December is always cause for a celebration!