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The Whitsundays sit roughly halfway along the Queensland coast, an archipelago of 74 islands scattered across the Coral Sea at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Most of the islands are national park, their interiors thick with eucalypt and hoop pine, their shores edged by fringing reef. Airlie Beach, on the mainland, serves as the practical base for almost everything: a small town with a large marina, where the morning light catches the masts of sailing vessels preparing to head out across the Whitsunday Passage.

Whitehaven Beach is the reference point against which everything else in the region is measured. Stretching for seven kilometres along Whitsunday Island, the largest in the group, it is composed almost entirely of silica sand so fine and white that it barely retains heat underfoot. At its northern end, Hill Inlet creates a tidal spectacle that has become one of the most photographed natural phenomena in Australia: as the tide moves, swirling channels of turquoise and aquamarine cut through the white sand in patterns that shift by the hour. Several of the cruises departing Airlie Beach combine a morning at Whitehaven with a walk up to the Hill Inlet lookout, and the combination of the two perspectives, one from sea level and one from above, gives a more complete sense of the place than either alone.