It offers accommodation ranging from backpacker hostels to the comfortable Coral Sea Hotel with its small jetty, watersports and commanding views.The family on board were off to Hamilton Island, a high-rise holiday camp property with its own airport. The honey- mooners were going to enjoy a luxurious break at Peppers Palm Bay on Long Island, reached by catamaran from Jilly’s ferry terminal.Others were heading south to Brisbane or to Sydney from the airport at Proserpine. We dropped anchor for the last night at South Molle Island.Supper and stars, bed and breakfast: our journey was drawing to a close. Already growing nostalgic, Richard, Jan, Chris, Sarah, Steve, Rachel, Mark, Maia, Max, John, Isobel, Ruth and I went ashore for one last quick adventure – the walk through a blizzard of blue butterflies, past fruit bats and beneath chattering parrots to the lookout point at Spion Kop Then a last cup of tea and a splash off the boat.

And at last the rusty red sails were rising up the masts, with much co-ordinated manpower tugging at the ropes that raised them.The Coral Trekker ploughed a steady path through the choppy waters all morning. I took a turn at the wheel, keeping course by compass and with an eye on the headland we had to pass to reach calmer waters. After halting to watch a pair of whales, and to snorkel off the low-tide sandbar extension to Langford Island, we sailed on, escorted some of the way by dolphins. We looked for the clown fish (known as Nemo since the animated Disney movie) that lives among the poisonous tentacles of the anemone.

A swallow-tailed bird with a red chest rested briefly on the boat while the captain listened intently to the crackling weather forecast over the ship’s radio.Our first port of call after breakfast was Luncheon Bay, to marvel at the coral thrown back by cyclones into a gully behind the sandy beach And then came a rendezvous with a dive boat. There was an urgent chatter to the sea as it chased past the boat The radio talked of a Force 5. The teacher from the Isle of Man responded with a jig played on her penny whistle.Morning brought a change The wind had swung from north to south and freshened. He sang shanties, accompanying himself on a small squeeze-box.