Seeing the Whitsunday Islands from above by private helicopter is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but is it worth the $1360 price tag? Sarah Pollok jumps aboard to find out.
Sipping on an ice-cold glass of bubbles, I stretch my legs out along the wooden deck floor, allowing the sun to dry the last of the salt water from my skin.
Out past the two-storey pontoon I’m marooned on is a surreal sort of nothingness; vivid turquoise water in every direction as far as the eye can see, broken only by small white-tipped waves and dark shadows of the reef below.
Sitting in what seems like the middle of the ocean feels as dreamlike as the helicopter ride here. For those who (like me before this trip) have never had the luck to try it, it’s an experience that truly does bend the imagination.
Gazing past the glass, it feels impossible to match the Google Maps image before you - massive islands and kilometre-long beaches shrunk to miniature size - with reality. In retrospect, this layer of surrealness was probably a good thing. A separation that allowed me to compartmentalise the fact that I was suspended 450 metres from the earth in what was essentially a metal bubble with a madly spinning rotor.
Bizarrely beautiful experiences were something of a theme during our “Journey to the Heart” scenic helicopter flight and snorkel experience around the Whitsundays islands.
After arriving at the helicopter pad on Hamilton Island, we received a concise safety briefing from David, a very Italian pilot with so-so-small talk but a passion for timeliness and accuracy; all the qualities you want in a pilot.
Then, for 30 minutes, David gave us a VIP tour of the Whitsundays from above, flying over Whitehaven Beach and Hill Inlet, Whitsunday Island, Hook Island, and Heart Reef, the company’s namesake. Sure enough, circling around the reef, we spotted the unmistakable heart shape in the coral.
Beside it, David pointed out a tiny white speck, the private two-storey pontoon our group of six would spend the next 90 minutes on. Coming in to land, he straightened up in his chair and put seven years of experience into good use, landing with the gentlest of bumps.
After taking a few pictures with the helicopter, we descended a staircase to the pontoon’s main floor, U-shaped, with large cushy couches and chairs, a small kitchenette and a car-sized platform in the centre, which was lowered into the water.
Here, we met Paddy, a witty, sea-weathered bloke who looked like he had a lifetime of incredible stories hiding behind his twinkling eyes. Handing out snorkelling gear, Paddy reeled off the key safety pointers and snorkelling tips, the most memorable being to “pop your head up every few minutes, so you know you’re close to the pontoon and not near Fiji”.
He pointed to a peanut-shaped bank of coral, aptly named Peanut Reef, and told us to swim once around it, anticlockwise, before swimming back.
Then, we were off, unleashed into the unusual underwater world. The last time I snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef was in the early 2000s, a disappointingly dull and dusty experience thanks to some bleaching disease I was too young to fully understand. But today it’s like a brand new reef, rich in a rainbow of colour and pattern, silent but busy with movement.
Large shoals of tiny fish shot across my path like a moving Milky Way and giant clams seemed to gossip to one another as their lips opened and shut. Looking up, I could see slender fish brandishing their little sword-shaped noses through the clear, warm water, while below, bright trees of coral swayed lazily in the currents. Spots and stripes, spirals and squiggles, the tapestry of patterns and colours felt trippy and absurd, everything so alive yet foreign.
Sufficiently awed by all there was to see, I popped my head up and spotted the aluminium-plated pontoon. Sleek and chromatic, its material wasn’t chosen because it looks like something out of a James Bond film (although, it absolutely does) but because it takes on the colour of the sky and lessens the visual impact for the surrounding wildlife.
This is the same reason the company barely feed the fish, even though they are allowed to. If they unclipped the pontoon chain and left tomorrow, Paddy said, they would leave no trace, both visually and from an ecosystem perspective.
As for the other pontoons you can find on the outer edges of the Great Barrier, well, that’s a different story.
The time passed all too quickly and soon we clambered back into the helicopter for an equally scenic flight back to Hamilton Island.
It was the end of the Journey To the Heart Tour; a three-hour experience that included an hour in a private helicopter, two glasses of bubbles, a dozen picture-perfect views and some of the best snorkelling I’ve ever done.
So, was it worth the $1360 price tag?
As a newbie to scenic flights, the price seemed incredibly steep. Yet, a cursory search for scenic helicopter rides of a similar duration (1 hour in the air) in Aotearoa pulled up prices around $800. Those with an experience element (like landings or hikes) that lasted 3-4 hours, like mine did, sit closer to $1200.
So far, so fair.
As flights go, either end of the 30-minute journey was the most scenic, passing the islands and then the heart of the reef. In the middle was quite a bit of, well, ocean.
Yet once you arrived, it did feel like the definition of luxury, from the sleek pontoon (with soft pop tunes playing in the background) and bubbles, to the high-quality snorkelling gear and total remoteness.
In all honesty, I did dream about having 15-20 friends with me instead of the maximum six. But if you had an intimate group you wanted to celebrate an occasion or tick off two bucket-list items with (aka helicopter rides and Great Barrier Reef snorkelling), this is an unforgettable option.
Like all outdoor things, weather played a massive part in making the day perfect. If you’re splashing out, I would pay close attention to the weather forecast and shoot for the day with the most sun.
The writer was hosted by Queensland Tourism and Hamilton Island Air.
For more to see and do in Queensland, visit queensland.com/nz/en/home