We visited Chalkies Beach on our first full day, on a catamaran which also took us to Whitehaven Beach.
Plum Pudding Island is a small island between the northern ends of Hamilton and Dent Islands with a small and vibrant reef surrounding it. A highlight here was the beautiful Phyllidiid Nudibranch that we saw.
In addition to the snorkelling, we managed to get two dives in whilst on Hamilton Island. This involved a boat trip out to Bait Reef, where most people where tipped into the water to snorkel, but there were a handful of us who went diving.
Unfortunately, the first dive was only 15 minutes long as one of the young girls on the dive sucked all her air very rapidly, she was clearly very nervous. The second dive was a bit better, as the crew made a plan to take the girls up when they got low so that the rest of us could keep going. I managed to keep my air going for the ful time and we surfaced on 50 minutes after seeing some cool stuff.
Amazingly, there was also pretty good snorkelling at Catseye Beach, in front of the big hotels. I came across two cleaning stations where small cleaner wrasse where busily attending to Parrot Fish and another larger fish that I haven't figured out yet. I saw three turtles in my first session, and another one in my second.