Elysian Retreat, Whitsundays

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Kscf

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With Australia and pretty much the Queensland still locked down I figured we would take a nice trip in the state rather than risking interstate travel and not being able to come back. We are based in Brisbane.

I have been a marriott fanboy for far too long, Lifetime gold on the way to become Lifetime Platinum and usually booked trips around where they had properties.

We moved to Australia in March 2020 and have been pretty much doing only local trips to Sunshine coast, Gold Coast etc so I started looking at some virtuoso properties to relax and unwind.

Elysian retreat in the Whitsundays caught my eye and I booked it for Dec 23-28, I also booked Whitsundays Apartments from Dec 19-23 in the Hamilton Island as Qualia was not fully booked out.

Whitsunday apartments is just your average apartment hotel, we had booked the Deluxe Coral Sea view room which is the best room you can book. It has a nice location, right in front of the CatsEye beach and like a 10 min walk from the marina where the shops and restaurants are located

Hamilton island is a special island in the sense that there are no cars except for the shuttles operated by the tourism operators. Everyone gets around in a golf buggy, we didnt rent one as we love walking around.

We didnt miss it until we went to this place called One tree Hill to watch Sunset and it was quite a hike especially during the day.

Elysian retreat is located in another island called Long island, its very private , it has only 10 standalone villas and can accommodate max 20 people at any given time.

The transfer is by chopper either from Hamilton Island airport or from Proserpine airport, both roughly take about 10 mins and the one from Proserpine is a bit cheaper.

This is indeed a very special place and I highly recommend it.

It as an all inclusive resort in the sense that food and non-motorized sports are included.

Drinks are a bit pricey but considering that everything has to come from the main island by boat and Australia in general is expensive its not that crazy.

They have an organic vegetable garden and grow a lot of fruits and vegetables themselves. They have a star fruit tree and they also have a coughtail which has this fruit which was so amazing that I probably had around 20 of them over the course of our stay

We did a whitehaven beach tour which included the inlet hike at $250pp which is the same if you do from Hamilton Island or Airlie Beach.

I also wanted to do a jet ski tour but the operator could not confirm availability during our stay and I was quite bummed about it.

We did a hike which starts out at the back of the villas for about 2 hours one day and enjoyed it very much, I wanted to complete the hike but my wife started to feel the heat so we came down early.

Food- I was very concerned when I booked this private island as my wife is vegan and if she doesnt like the food, we are screwed as there is literally no other options.

I have to say this is one of the best food both she and I have ever tasted in our lives.

One first day we felt the portions were less and when we said that to the owner, he made a note of it and from the next time the food portions were very generous.

For Christmas lunch they had prepared King Prawns looked in fresh seawater which was amazing, also pumpkin wellington for my wife which was quite frankly out of the world, they also had prepared chia seeds vegan cheesecake which was again the best of the dessert options.

Some minor complaints - they packed wraps for us for the whitehaven beach tour and it was only so - so.

For dessert we had Sorbet like 4 or 5 times , it was different kinds but it was still Sorbet.

The last night my wife's dessert was peach with suger water or something which was not at all good.

One last thing about the owner - his name is Charlton and he is a South African immigrant and he is very hands on and you can say that he is extremely passionate about the island.

It is 100% solar powered and they harvest rain water to be used for everyone.

This is a family owned resort which was purchased by him and his sister and they renovated it completely but adding air-con and becoming fully solar.

He said he heard from chopper operators that guests were leaving earlier because of no air - con and thats when he decided that every room has to have air-con.

The food service was very good but definitely slow as we had to wait quite a bit between courses.

There are mosquitoes and insects which are huge in size, so insect spray use is a must.

This seems to be a popular resort for honeymooners as we saw atleast 5 couples on their honeymoon, 2 during our first night who left the day after and 3 who joined us later.

We would gladly come back but during the winter season.
 

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Some more pics here as u can only attach 10 per post.
 

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Some more pics
 

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