Before leaving Tongue Bay, we made another trip up to the Hill Inlet Lookout the next morning, the higher tide made the area look quite different with the sand bars hidden just below the turquoise water.
We made our way back to the boat and sailed the short distance around to the southern end of Whitehaven Beach. After anchoring just offshore, we took the tender over to the beach.
The sand at Whitehaven consists of 98% pure silica which gives the beach the bright white colour. It is also incredibly fine, making it feel almost like mud underfoot. The shallow beach and the white sand combined to give the water a beautiful turquoise colour.
Whitehaven Beach is a popular place for day trips, so we decided to head to Chance Bay on the opposite side of the island to escape the crowds. After just a short walk through the forest we came to a clearing with views over the sourthern end of Whitehaven Beach.
The track continued through the forest where the noises of boats, seaplanes and people at Whitehaven Beach were quickly replaced by native birds; we even spotted a large monitor lizard creeping around in the leaves on the forest floor.
The forest suddenly opened up and we found ourselves in the perfect crescent of Chance Bay. We picked a spot on the sand and tucked into our picnic. We had the entire bay to ourselves and after exploring the area for a while we put on our wetsuits and headed into the water to snorkel. We swam around the bay, spotting huge shoals of fish on each of the coral heads, as we made our way back into shore we even spotted a string ray partially hidden under the sand.
We reluctantly repacked our rucksack leaving our quiet bay behind and returned to Whitehaven. By the time we hiked back over most of the day visitors had left and we enjoyed a quiet walk along the beach.
Despite being busier than some of the other places we had spent the night, as you can see from the photo above, we had a great spot just off Whitehaven Beach.
After spending some time on Whitehaven Beach we made our way back to the boat and enjoyed a quite evening watching the light change over the hills behind Whitehaven and Chalkies Beach on neighbouring Haslewood Island.