Wind  variable 10 knts  Sunny  slightly overcast in morning but beautiful in the afternoon.

Another lazy morning aboard O’vive. Jenny fished for a while but only pulled in small yellow lipped bream and a very small Trevally.

We motored up to Lindeman Island but the autopilot played up again and we had to go round in circles to recalibrate again. We have no idea why it suddenly plays up after working fine for weeks.

Finally it operated correctly so we headed round to the north side of Lindeman and anchored off Gap Beach.

Lindeman has been recently bought by the Chinese for 12 million, pretty cheap for a whole island in the Whitsundays. Club Med paid 15 million for it in 1990 and spent a heap of money on it. The new owners are going to revamp it, put a six star resort as well as other dwellings, a restaurant and shopping area, air strip for jets, a four hole golf course and a 50 berth marina for guests and charters boats. I guess it won’t be operating for a while and I am assuming the majority of the island will remain forested as it is now.

Gap Beach is a lovely spot with dramatic views of Pentacost with  Hamilton Island in the distance.

John dropped us off at the beach while he trolled around Little Lindeman in the hope of catching a fish. It was tricky to get ashore as the shoreline was dotted with small bommies.

We walked along the rocky beach looking for the track leading up to the ridge. It was hard to find but eventually we spotted a picnic table hidden in the scrub about two thirds of the way along the beach towards the west. The hidden path wound its way along the side of the hill for a kilometre until it reached a saddle in the middle of the island. The path wove through semi rainforest and dry schlerophyll  punctuated by stone steps and cool shady gullies.

Once again we were dazzled by swarms of beautiful Blue Tiger butterflies

congregating in the moist shady gullies and the occasional rustle in the undergrowth of a brush turkey. The turkey kept Morgan intrigued but she wasn’t allowed off the path.

 

We reached the saddle to find signs leading to the resort and Mt Oldfield and another telling us the path we had just come up was dangerous.

Not sure why the sign was there , obviously they didn’t want people walking down it and it definitely wasn’t dangerous.

We hurried back down the track to meet up with John as time was short and dinghied back to Ovive. We headed around to the southern side of Lindeman to Plantation Bay and attempted to anchor but there was too much coral. The only spot to anchor was taken up by two other boats. Headed over to Neck Bay and attempted to anchor but the anchor kept rolling over and the chain was twisted. Finally we anchored further down Shaw in the same spot as last night. The wind is supposed to turn round to the north tonight and get strong then swing back round to the south in the morning, hope this anchorage is good for northerlies to southerlies.