In Search Of Lindeman Island’s Mythical Waterfall – My Return To The Whitsundays

Since finishing my contract with Club Med as their sound engineer/DJ in the Whitsundays, Queensland, I’ve spent the last two months seeing friends and family in Sydney, the Central Coast, Melbourne and Brisbane. While awaiting my posting with Princess Cruises as an Assistant Cruise Director, I had a couple of weeks up my sleeve and decided to head back to the Whitsundays, but this time on holiday. In exchange for singing songs on the guitar in the bar every afternoon from 5.30pm-6.30pm, general manager Hendel Duplessy kindly put me up in a guest room and I had my days free for exploring and playing tennis.

I’d lived six months on Lindeman Island and thought I’d seen nearly all there was to see on the eight square kilometre, 692 hectare island. But tales of mythical waterfall and a beautiful, secluded crescent beach spotted from a seaplane inspired me to set out on foot each morning, sweat bands in place, walking stick in hand.

With equally intrepid adventurers like Gavin “Connery” Hunter and Rob “Michael Chang” Waterson at my side, we found not one, but several secluded beaches that have no walking trails to them, though they weren’t the one I was looking for. Clambering over rocks in my new Dunlop Volleys (just $27 from Big W), we reached one impassable revene too many, leaving the beach spotted from the seaplane to be found on another holiday via an enthusiastic kayak mission.

As for the waterfall, it became known as “Emily’s Waterfall,” named after a former Club Med receptionist / explorer who is said to possess photographic evidence of herself at the otherwise unknown waterfall. Hazy instructions were passed on to us from friends of Emily’s saying to follow the river at Gap Beach, or was it the river at Boat Port? We followed both rivers and they led to nothing other than Rob speculating Emily may have been intoxicated when she thought she found it. “What about the photographic evidence?” I said defending her. And so the mystery remains of Emily’s Waterfall which in all likelihood, had dried up since her discovery due to a sensational lack of rain.

Despite not finding the beach I wanted (if you know Lindeman, it is past the rocky headland the next beach after Plantation), nor Emily’s Waterfall, the beaches we did discover were sensational and reaffirmed to me that not only should Boat Port be where the resort is, but it has the largest “Boring Name: Beautiful Beach” ratio in the world. On an island with beaches named Plantation, Gap and Coconut, many visitors don’t even visit Boat Port. Which is a shame.

The top photo here not only shows the small slither of white sand that is Boat Port in the bottom right, but also why it is so worth it to walk around the rocks to the right. If your ankles are up to it, there is another beautiful white sand beach and then best of all, a sand spit that reaches almost all way to Little Lindeman Island. To top it all off, the vistas from these beaches are probably my favourite in the Whitsundays with the dramatic Pentecost Island always the crown-jewel. In the top left of the photo, Pentecost was the only island other than Whitsunday Island itself that Captain Cook named when he first sailed through 250 years ago. Cook regarded the island as the most impressive in the Whitsunday group and while my plans to camp on it proved unsuccessful, I did circle right round its dramatic rocky peak in the same seaplane where I spotted that as yet un-laid on beach.

It is no secret Club Med on Lindeman Island is due a refurbishment which will do justice to the wonderful island it inhabits. Plans are in place and I can’t wait to go back, though in all honesty, it is the beauty of the island rather than the buildings that makes it so worthwhile.

For beaches and views, head to Boat Port and venture to the right. For boys-own adventuring complete with cliffs, massive rock pools flush with fish and good for snorkelling, head to Gap Beach and again, get ready to clamber to the right. For views of it all, head up Mt Oldfield. And for the waterfall, ask Emily.

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