100 Magic Miles ~ The Whitsunday Islands

Introduction to the Whitsundays

The Whitsunday islands are located just off the Queensland coast of Australia between approximately 20o and 21o south latitude. They are a group of rocky, mostly unpopulated continental islands (made up of the same stuff as the adjacent mainland but with fringing coral reefs). They were cut off from the mainland during the decline of the last ice age some 8500 years ago. From the sailor’s point of view they provide excellent cruising grounds, protected as they are from oceanic swells by the Great Barrier Reef which lies about 40 nautical miles to the east. They also have many sheltered anchorages each within easy sailing distance of the next.

What constitutes the Whitsunday islands?

When the Whitsundays’ European discoverer, James Cook, sailed through Passage in June 1770, he didn’t actually name the islands but rather 'Whitsunday's Passage', which was the passage between Cape Conway (20^O 22’S, 148^O 55’E)

bounded by the mainland on the west and the islands lying to the east. He named the surrounding islands 'Cumberland Isles'. On Cook's sketch of the area, the label 'Cumberland Isles' extends well to the south of Cape Conway and the islands to the east. Cook actually named only one of the islands, Pentecost. Successive naval surveyors in the 1800s gave names to most of the rest, many names from the old county of Cumberland in England because the landscape reminded the surveyors of that part of England. Today's charts show a 'Whitsunday Group' (as well as others), but there is no official definition of 'Whitsunday islands'. There are some 150 islands, islets and rocks in the Cumberlands, which the hydrographic office considers to be all the islands from Snare Peak Island in the south (21° 06' S. 149^o 56' E) to Hayman Island in the north (20^o 03' S, 148°53'E). Someone somewhere along the line in an advertising brochure seized upon the number '74' as being the number of 'Whitsunday islands', a figure often touted in promotion of the area but which has no rational basis.

The climate

The Whitsundays have a warm subtropical climate with mild winters and warm to very warm summers. Much of the annual rainfall occurs in the wet season', which is usually January-March, when a considerable portion of rain falls at night. The water is a swimmable temperature year round, and the Queensland sun creates shirt-sleeve weather most of the time.

Whitsunday temperatures and rainfall

Temperatures in degrees Celcius (to convert to approximate Fahrenheit temperatures, double and add 32)

Normal annual rainfall - 1445 mm

The southern tropics are very occasionally visited by cyclones, which can occur in the Whitsundays from November to May, but if they happen at all, they are most likely to come in February and March.