Fitzroy Island

Cairns Lagoon Exotic wildlife on Fitzroy Island

Fitzroy Island

Fitzroy Island

Fitzroy Island

Our last Great Barrier Reef adventure was spending two days on Fitzroy Island thirty kilometers from Cairns. We were blessed with another warm sunny day with puffy clouds over the mainland and Coral Sea when we boarded a ferry-boat for the hour trip over the deep blue sea.

Sailing from Cairns to Fitrzoy Island

“I love the Great Barrier Reef!”

Fitzroy Island is a popular with day trippers who want to snorkel for the afternoon or tourists like us who want to spend a night or two at the resort and explore the idyllic setting. This allowed us to explore the island, hiking through tropical rainforest and to swim and snorkel on Nudey Beach. We managed to have several interesting experiences, enjoying the forest, seeing exotic animals and birds, and spend two afternoons on the nearly deserted beach to snorkel and swim in the warm waters.

Fitzroy resort

Australian flag with Southern Cross constellation

Fitzroy is a tropical paradise with modern resort with a pool, restaurants, gift shops, and even a theater for matinees and evening movies. Our room was on a second floor with a balcony looking over flowering tropical trees, a coral beach, and cove where yachts and sailboats were anchored. The views were almost idyllic with fragrance of flowers, palm trees, butterflies, and tropical birds.

View from our second floor balcony

Coconut palm tree outside our balcony

Tropical tree outside out balcony

Nudey Beach

Sailboats anchored off Nudey Beach

Shortly after we arrived, we changed into bathing suits, picked up fins, snorkels, masks and stinger suits to protect against small poisonous jellyfish. We set out to spend the afternoon snorkeling on Nudey Beach a kilometer south of the resort. Before Fitzroy Island was developed, the island was popular with nude sunbathers.

The hike to Nudey Beach was over rocky path, navigating over boulders, and through thick vines, ferns, heavy underbrush, and tropical soft woods. A bit exotic and challenging, but worth the walk. This kept casual hikers away from the beach. When we arrived, only a handful of people on the beach of bleached coral and seashells. The coral and shells were smooth from rolling over on the sandy bottom of seas, eventually washing up onshore and being bleached by the sun. They ranged in size from marbles to clumps the size of your hand.

Nudey Beach

Bleached coral and seashells on Nudey beach

Snorkeling

“Are there sharks here?”

Snorkeling babes

We walked from the coral beach into the shallows, swimming out about ten meters where the depth was about waist-high. At this point, you can see small coral formations. Swimming out further, larger coral formations rose from the sandy bottoms. The reefs were not as colorful as those we had seen on our dive trips, possibly because of the warm water close to shore. Climate change and global warming are killing reefs with warmer temperatures causing stress in the fragile coral ecology.