The Whitsundays Whitehaven Beach

Whitehaven beach is 6 km of pure white silica sand often know as 'Heaven on Earth'. Today we were lucky enough to visit this natural beauty of Queensland. Although the weather was on and off showers for most the day it didn't stop our group having a good old fashioned footy game. Our boat skipper told us to polish any jewellery we might have at the beach as the silica sand is so fine and pure the substance gives a natural polish, you can even clean your teeth with this stuff!

Today we understand silica sand to be formed after millions of years pushed up from tectonic plate movement. More imaginatively the Aboriginal people use to talk of "dreamtime" - their story of creation. Our guide told us of a myth of the Rainbow serpent: "a snake of enormous size living within the deepest waterholes of many of Australia's waterways; descended from that larger being visible as a dark streak in the Milky Way, it reveals itself to people in this world as a rainbow as it moves through water and rain, shaping landscapes."