Getting to Lady Elliot Island

Not knowing where you’d want to go, can take you to the most beautiful places. On the recommendation of an Aussie in the Gympie area, we decided to go to the southernmost island of the Great Barrier Reef: Lady Elliot Island!

The coral cay is lying completely isolated in the ocean. We came in on a little 15 person propeller plane. Since it was full to the last seat, the pilot asked me if I wanted to sit next to him…Awesome!

So after we had left the mainland and headed in northeastern direction out over the Pacific, it was blue sky and blue ocean all around us. Eventually, we got through some clouds and then the pilot pointed forward: “There’s your island.” The airstrip to land on is stretching 600m over the entire island and it’s a grass strip. So, landing there is apparently more difficult than on concrete lanes.

We circled twice around the island and could enjoy the great view over this circle shaped coral cay with turquoise water around it. Then we started to descend towards the runway and landed safely on the airstrip. We had lots of speed so we used the runaway all the way to its end so that we could just turn at the end in order to park the plane on the side of it.