Whitehaven Beach

Whitehaven Beach runs for some seven kilometres along the eastern shore of Whitsunday Island, the largest of the Whitsunday group off the Queensland coast, inside Whitsunday Islands National Park. Its colour is the first surprise: the sand is about 98 per cent pure silica, so fine and so white that it holds far less heat than ordinary sand and stays comfortable to walk on barefoot. Against it the Coral Sea shows every shade from glassy green in the shallows to deep ink-blue in the channel.

The most famous view is at the northern end, where the beach bends into Hill Inlet. Here tidal currents push the white sand and the sea water into each other in constantly shifting swirls — ribbons of white, turquoise and dark blue that never repeat from one tide to the next. A short track climbs Tongue Point to a lookout above the inlet; the walk is about 1.4 km return and takes around forty minutes. The patterns are at their clearest from mid to low tide, when more of the sand shows through the water, and early in the morning, before the day boats arrive.

The beach took its name in 1879 from the naval surveyor E. P. Bedwell, who named it after Whitehaven in Cumberland. The island is national park, with camping grounds and day-use areas rather than resorts, and the beach is left to the tides. It has collected a string of awards — Queensland's cleanest beach in 2008 and a top eco-friendly beach in a 2010 CNN list among them — and since 2009 an open-water swim has been held along it every November.

Getting there

The nearest airport is Hamilton Island (HTI), about 12 km away across the water; the regional city of Mackay is about 97 km to the south. The beach can only be reached by sea or air: day boats, seaplanes and helicopters leave from Airlie Beach on the mainland and from Hamilton Island. Camping on the island is in national-park campgrounds and needs a permit.