Wow, talk about resurrecting old threads. I was last on Hamilton Island 20 years ago when I lived in Hawaii and roamed around the Pacific in and out of the Navy. The island was a great place to visit - nice big runway. The staff there did not have it so good. They lived "over the hill" in barracks-like trailers with flimsy locks and marginal security. Plus they paid the same prices as guests for food and beers. Anyone could get employment there - Commonwealth or not. Kinda slavelike feel to the place for the staff. But very, very confortable for guests. I could have lived there for a while but I only had two weeks.
Keith Williams who developed all this lived in a pretty nice home that featured, along with a few other amenities, a retracting helipad. As soon as I stepped onto the main street there, I get whomped with some serious déjà vu - the developer had been so taken with Front Street in Lahaina, Maui that he copied the whole thing down to fine details. It was unreal since I had just been on Maui a couple of weeks earlier.
The whole Whitsunday Island chain is great for cruising since it's mostly deep water with easily seen reefs. It is so accomodating that the allies staged their fleet here before the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942.
It's a two hour quick cat run to the GBR. So-so diving. Better cruising grounds. I saw a bunch of huge glitz yachts.
Not sure this is going to help any of the above being the 9th post in a 7-year old thread.
