Welcome to the ‘Wet’Sundays

Before embarking on this journey we got a lot of travel advice. A lot. We hired a couple randos on Upwork to map out potential itineraries. We read up on suggested itineraries. And we spoke to numerous people who had traveled to and lived in the parts of the world we were heading to. We got loads of tips! We tinkered endlessly with our itinerary based on people’s suggestions and advice.

But among the formidable warehouse of advice we got, there was one thing no one mentioned: that it was wet season in Queensland. Apparently, February through mid-April is NOT the best time to see the Great Barrier Reef. This would have been a valuable tip!

10 years ago on my first trip to Australia the whitsundays were a harrowing highlight. I braved seas like the perfect storm (and sea sickness to go with it!) in a bunk bed filled boat. But it was worth the hours spent pale-faced, trembling with nausea, while the salty captain yelled at me to stare at the horizon. (I did, and frequently contemplated jumping into it.)

Because after the sea sickness subsided, the whitsundays were bliss (note: foreshadowing). A total must-see in Australia, and I wanted Jay to see that too.

And so, I suggested we forgo the backpacker boat and make this a splurge of our trip. A ‘high’ to our ‘lows’ of peanut butter sandwiches and tins of tuna prepared on laps while road-tripping in our tiny rental cars. (To be clear, these highs and lows aren’t always the high and low-lights of our voyage, simply balance in our spending approach!).

And so, we skipped over the overpopulated, backpacker boats and booked a different category of adventure here. Great meals, a cabin to ourselves, and a maximum of 6 people sailing the whitsundays on a beautiful boat (actually called Bliss!). It was one of the few items on this trip we locked in early and planned around. We had high hopes.

And so we arrived in Airlie Beach. That is, after the plane struggled to land (note, we later learned that the Proserpine airport – that we continue to call Porcupine – has no radar. They land by sight (!!!), and could not see the ground while we were coming in!). So we knew weather wasn’t on our side. And when the shuttle bus driver welcomed us to the ‘Wet’sundays, we started to clue in.

The rain was relentless, but people didn’t seem so bothered. It was like they expected it. Apparently, only we were surprised!

Now that we know, it seems so obvious. We’re in the tropics! Like every other tropic in the world, there’s a wet season. In Australia, Summer is it. So we should have expected to get a little wet.

But what we couldn’t have known to expect was a cyclone from West Australia meeting a weather system on its way up to Papau New Guinea. It meant that this was the most sky we saw in the 3 following days.

But all was not lost. The weather was so bad that the other people on the cruise had chosen to cancel (they clearly understood the local forecast a bit better than we did!). But this meant we had the boat to ourselves. Our own private charter around the Whitsundays. If the weather had been halfway decent, it would have been unbelievable – as it was, it wasn’t so bad.

And so we made the most of our 3 day adventure. We ate and drank like lifestyles of the rich and famous!

And we saw some fish, colourful coral and one HUGE Stingray.

We made the most of a couple swanky days at sea, and then booked ourselves the next flight out to Melbourne. (We also wrote a sternly worded letter to the tour company who shouldn’t have operated the tour given the cyclone-related weather).

In the wise words of Outkast “you can plan a pretty picnic, but you can’t predict the weather”. So, at least we had a pretty picnic.

And we got to see a bunch of these guys on the way to the airport! Totally worth it!

And eventually, we made it to Melbourne… but I’ll save that for our next story.