Big Day Out

Splurging on a special day out often leads to the most magical travel memories. With far-flung travel off the cards, you can create the same sensation closer to home, writes Michael Harry.

- Michael Harry

The day began rattling along the narrow, jungle-fringed lanes of Qualia in a golf cart. As the sun rose, I pulled up to the private helipad – an Aztec-inspired cobblestone circle on the water’s edge – as a familiar buzz hummed in the distance. Soon, a fly-like, glass-fronted chopper descended to scoop up our party of four from Hamilton Island and spirit us away over the Great Barrier Reef. My stomach dropped and lurched as we hurtled over the spongelike islands, jewelled reefs and the blinding sweep of Whitehaven Beach below before we touched down on a custom-built pontoon floating within an easy snorkel of the renowned Heart Reef.

You know Heart Reef – the love heart-shaped hoop of marine life that’s become a symbol of the Whitsundays. Until recently, its secluded position meant you could only see it from the air, but now you can arrive like an action hero, landing on top of a private clubhouse that conceals a glass-bottomed boat. For an all-too-brief hour in the sun, we sipped Champagne for breakfast and splashed around the pristine reef, marvelling at this wildly improbable, utterly glamorous outpost that’s been built, well, just because.

The Journey to the Heart tour is one of those once-in-a-lifetime blowouts you only think to do on holiday. So often the art of travel is asking why not? Book that day trip, take the upgrade, and make those memories that will last a lifetime.

Last year, on a week-long getaway to Bali, I decided to head east to the lauded Amankila resort on the black sand beaches below Mount Agung. The resort itself was an understated palace of raised stone walkways and thatched-roof pavilions, but it was a day on the water that proved the most memorable.