A few months ago, my wonderful husband had another birthday ?, and how better to celebrate, then a surprise visit to Daydream Island? My mum said she could have the twins for a few days, and the night before, we found some deals on flights and accommodation, so we didn’t need too much more convincing!
(This photo is from the Daydream Island website)
As you can see, it is a teeny, tiny island, with lots of pools and ocean! We had an amazing time – how could we not?!
What other place can you do this?! ? (Reload your page if the video doesn’t work)
Some things I’ve written about in this post are:
- The Island, Pools and Relaxing
- The Public Fish Feed (video above)
- Kayaking and Paddle boarding (and yoga)
- Sailing
- Wildlife
- Snorkling (Fish and Coral) – (The absolute highlight! It was amazing!!! I’ll forgive you if you just scroll to that section!!! ?)
The Island
The entire island was all the one resort (Daydream Island Resort), and the grounds were immaculate!
There was accomadation, resturants, pools, gardens, forest and many other activities all on this small island. It takes roughly 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other, down this beautiful boardwalk.
They had some beautiful mermaids at Mermaid Beach where we did the water activities!
One caught Pete’s eye for a minute!
So I had to nip that in the bud!
And then we became good friends….but seriously though…loook at the scales of her tail! (Haha, our house has been very mermaidy recently, as they are Tori’s new favourite thing!)
One of my favourite places was ‘Lovers Cove’ where we would go snorkelling, or sit and watch the sunset.
They also have weddings there and marine biology information nights which are insanely cool! (They have a live feed projected onto a screen from a scuba diver in the water, and they explain everything they find!) Very cool!
Here I am fleeing the scene after snorkelling as a wedding was about to start!
And that view right?
Everyday was so relaxing! A hammock here, a hammock there…you get my drift!
Fish Feeding
It was also at lovers cove that we did the fish feeding (see the earlier video). It was incredible, I’ve never seen so many fish in one place before, especially in ankle deep water only one metre off the shore!!!
Incase you missed it…here is the video again…
Kayaking and Paddle boarding
Here we are enjoying Kayaking and paddle boarding. The water was the perfect temperature, and as there were no waves, it was so relaxing to just lie on our paddle boards and sway in the water.
We also did some yoga…which might I add is much harder than it looks!
I can do a body balance class no problem on dry ground, but throw in water and it was so much more difficult!
My stabilizers were working overtime! But at least every time I fell, it was into water…
I was so proud of finally getting this photo! It literally took 700 attempts!
I do think it would be an incredible concept or business venture, to start a paddle boarding yoga class. They can all be linked together in a grid with the teacher up front…it would be epic! Difficult and relaxing!
Sailing
Then onto the sailing ⛵️…we had never sailed before so it was great to learn. Peter especially enjoyed it. (It’s hard to find something he hasn’t done lol)
Doesn’t he look handsome!
I tried my best ‘confident sailor pose’…
Wildlife
Something I didn’t expect was the amount of wildlife on this teeny tiny island! There were kangaroos everywhere and they were so tame! I’m sure I could have patted them if I really tried!
Did you see the joey??
How cute! Here he is again. Apparently this joey was not long out of it’s pouch at this point.
Then we found the rest of the family…
We also made friends with this guy! He was so tame too! And very curious…
And you could hear the birds and insects and night…like I said, lots of wildlife for a tiny island!
A Side Note:
One thing I felt like they (who?) lied to us about, was that there was no sandy beach on the island.
At all.
It was all hard dead coral. ?
Oh and no waves. ?
Which was obvious, once we got there and realized how sheltered the island was by other islands. And that it is in a coral reef….i.e. The Great Barrier Reef. Yet another big hint!! Dah! ?
So the beaches were all dead coral. But…
Snorkling
…the coral and lack of waves meant awesome snorkeling…which was definitely the highlight!
It was incredible! We bought some fish food, punched a hole in the lid,
then BOOM!
This happened!….Instant popularity!
And here it is on video!
We snorkelled for hours at a time and even made friends with this little guy!
He let us swim with him for ages!
The coral was phenomenal! I was pretty stupid and touched some of it, then later learned that some corals can sting you in the day time, and all corals can sting you at night!!!
There were three full time marine biologists on the island who taught us amazing things about the coral and reef!
It was like another world!
Pete taught me how to equalise my ears properly and after that I was gone!
Sadly any month with an R in it (September to April), is stinger season in the Whitsundays, so we had to wear stinger suits, but it wasn’t too bad. They were inexpensive to hire and were very comfy. Not to be confused with wetsuits, stinger suits are a lot lighter, just like togs onesies!
I had to do some posing because my mum loaned me her awesome hat that you can squash in your suitcase and it comes out perfect!!! WHAAAT?! Where have you been all my life?!
I nearly stole it after the trip too…but I didn’t. Now I’m on the hunt for a similar one!
It’s pretty amazing that Daydream Island Resort also have the largest outdoor aquarium in the southern hemisphere! Hence the 3 full time marine biologists! You can walk beside it – it goes around the huge lobby and under bridges in a big circle. You can also dine beside it each breakfast and some dinners and watch feedings and information talks too.
The outdoor theatre….
So as you can tell, Daydream Island is an amazing place for a relaxing holiday! It is very isolated and serene, which was just what we wanted, but it may be a bit small to stay longer than a week… There are more activities than I have listed (like put-put on a very cool Australiana course (we tied!), basketball, tennis and so many more, so check out their website for more info!)
But what can beat lounging by the pool? (again with the cool hat!)
Oh and also, although we didn’t take the kids (which was awesome, thanks mum!) it did seem like a very family friendly place, and there were quite a few families there who were really enjoying themselves. So that’s another thing to think about…
If you do have longer than a week, there are plenty of other islands and day trips to places like Whitehaven Beach or the Great Barrier Reef.
However, we thought we would just focus on everything our beautiful little island had to offer and do the rest another trip!
