According to local tourist guides Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island is the seventh best in the world. I’m not sure who voted, and it’s most unusual for anything in Australia (and NZ) not to be claimed as ‘best’, but anyway it really is a fine beach:

 

 

The photo above is looking more or less south along the beach, with Hill Inlet to the right.

The sands are blinding white pure silica, the origin of which is a bit of a mystery. It is volcanic, and comes from eroding granite of a type not found nearby. This long (7km) beach is the only place that it appears in the Whitsundays, so why it is here (and has been for apparently about 80 000 years, despite sea levels going up and down during that time) and nowhere else is a puzzle currently unsolved. It really is a fine sight, and despite receiving 130 000 visitors per annum we found most of it to be deserted most of the time. Here are the two sisters from Vulcan Spirit, alone on this magnificent beach :

 

 

 

Note that the water in the inlet has changed colour from blue to green as the tide changes. Amazing.

 

Ali striding off down the totally empty beach for a 12km walk with Louise:

 

 

Of course, a beach of this type demands a swim:

 

 

And some people just have to demonstrate that they’re really not old, at all at all:

 

 

And finally a panorama taken by Louise with her nice new Olympus camera (your correspondent just visible as the dot to the left of the boulder on the beach at the left hand side of the photo):

 

 

Definitely a place worth coming to, if you like beaches.