Family favourite ... turquoise waters surround the island.
It's so retro it hurts, yet Sarah Macdonald ends up cheering for this Whitsundays favourite.
THE success of a holiday is only partially because of place. Elements such as the weather, timing, expectations, attitude and luck have an awful lot to do with it. So it's important, if you find the perfect trip, to never ever try and replicate it; combining all those elements in the same way again is impossible.
Last year my family and I had a perfect, never-to-be-repeated holiday. It was a spur-of-the-moment journey to our first resort. While we expected to hate such a manufactured experience, Dunk Island lived up to all the cliches of a picture-perfect postcard: fecund rainforest, calm seas, heat and hammocks with a view of safely swimming children.
It was so fabulous we would have tried to do it all again except Dunk Island was completely trashed by cyclone Yasi in February. So, ignoring this obvious and rather ominous warning sign, we decided to try for a similar experience at Daydream Island in the Whitsundays. Daydream is a favourite resort for families with young children but the fact I have friends aged 40-plus who still rave about childhood holidays there should have warned me the resort may be a touch dated.
I should have been on even higher alert when one performed the resort song and dance for me:
"Oh when the sun goes to rest
That's the time I like best
In a South Sea cabaret
Where wahinis in bikinis do the
hula, serve martinis
Aloha! It's so GAY."
Daydream looks like a cheesy relic of the '80s, when gay meant something so very different. And while I know the '80s are back in fashion, they're a touch too close to the bone for this child of the era. The resort is like a giant old toilet block with blue columns and lots of yellow. It straddles a living lagoon featuring fountains of flying dolphins, orange shell statues and gushing waterfalls. In the giant, garish atrium, fish float down from the ceiling, a colourful carpet sits under bamboo furniture and the staff, wearing white nylon shirts covered in tropical fish, give you a shell necklace upon arrival. I kept expecting Julie from The Love Boat to pop up with a clipboard.
I had the Flock of Seagulls song I Ran on high rotation in my head before I even saw the lime-green bedspreads. So, when the song actually came over the piped music system (along with Tears for Fears and Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart), I just had to smile. Taking the Seagulls song literally we did run (not so far away) to the other end of the island where a neon-signed bistro flashed a Sunset Strip-meets-Gold Coast vibe. Inside the Fish Bowl, a massive shark mouth chased a mermaid across the ceiling, nets were suspended from the roof, a stringy-haired skeleton sat in a crows nest and the friendly staff sported pirate shirts. My smile became the giggles.
It was the putt-putt golf course that turned my laughter into hysterics. Daydream's mini golf is an around-Australia course where you sink a putt into a whale's blowhole; activate a speaker that plays didgeridoo sounds behind an Aboriginal statue at a mini Uluru; whack a ball along crocodile backs, through a snake's inners and beside a dingo with impossibly large gonads; dodge Kakadu boulders; hit up Snowy Mountains moguls; and – my personal favourite – whack the ball up the roof of parliament house featuring Bob Hawke and John Howard's heads sticking out of the lawn. At the 19th hole two mannequins – one babe with a Bundy T-shirt and the other dressed as resort owner Vaughan Bullivant – stand offering you a beer.
The kids were in heaven and I haven't laughed so much for years. "This place is completely perfect," my son said as he settled into bed the first night. "Yes," sighed my daughter. "I'm getting married here. Did you see that wedding chapel?"
But while Daydream caters for kids, it also thinks about their parents. The decent restaurant Mermaids is perfectly positioned on a grass area where wallabies graze and are tame enough to pat. The tennis courts are next to a giant plastic playground and the putt-putt golf circles a giant chess set with a view across the bay. The outdoor movie theatre shows children's movies as well as footy games and offers popcorn and alcohol and there is a kids' club. Besides, no amount of tacky neon can ruin a spectacular sunset over the purple hills of the mainland above a sparkling sea sprouting the occasional turtle.
Daydream and its neighbouring 73 Whitsunday islands are rocky outcrops that are the tips of ancient mountain ranges. At the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, the island claims to be the spot where Captain Cook spotted a mermaid in 1770. Originally called West Molle, it was owned by Gold Coast business identity Bernie Elsey, who introduced the gold bikini-clad meter maids to Surfers Paradise and fathered a baby at 75 with his Filipino bride.
Elsey wanted Daydream to be his kind of Surfers style but after being battered by cyclones, receiverships, misfortune, debt and white-shoe brigade grand schemes it never got that bad. The former water-ski showman turned vitamin manufacturer Vaughan Bullivant refurbished the island about a decade ago.
Bullivant needed some reviving of his own when he was a young skier in Florida: he crashed into a photographer's tower at 90km/h, sank to the bottom of the lake and was pulled out seven minutes later without a pulse. After CPR, he came back from the dead. He believes he avoided brain damage and permanent injury by a strict daily vitamin regime.
Now, Daydream Island's spa doesn't just offer facials and massages but also hydration, aromatherapy, naturopathic treatment, blood analysis, herbal remedies and aromatherapy. I just had a facial, figuring if my face is relaxed I won't care how unhealthy I am.
While mid-winter is still too cold to swim in the resort's unheated pools or to snorkel nearby coral outcrops, Daydream's greatest asset is the fact you can see the reef without getting wet. It's perfect for the very young or the elderly as the man-made lagoon gives endless opportunities to watch tropical fish, sea anemones, "Nemo" clownfish, reef sharks and gliding string rays (Pancake and Pikelet are so tame they come close for a pat if you've paid a fee). Entertaining reef rangers give free talks that include salacious details of the sex-changing parrotfish, which sleeps in a snot bag that it eats upon waking. My children were entranced and educated.
The resort is a touch worn out. The in-room movie system wasn't working when we visited, our little hired glass-bottom boat kept stalling (nearly depositing us on a coral beach), the mini Harbour Bridge on the golf course was closed and a spa heater was broken.
But if you love spa baths, having cocktails in plastic cups while you're seated inside a pool or if you want your child to see the Barrier Reef before it is killed by climate change, Daydream is far from a nightmare.
And while I am a bit of a style snob, the bit of Kath and Kim that lives inside me couldn't help but love its tacky charm. Besides, any airs and graces I may have tried to put on were undone as soon as my son and daughter climbed atop the mermaid sculptures off the main beach. My son yelled, "Mum, I just pressed her boobie three times to trigger a dynamite explosion," while my daughter ran up to reveal to a full restaurant of diners, "Guess what? I had a close look. Mermaids do have a bum hole!" Classy.
Perhaps Daydream is perfect for us after all.
Trip notes
Getting there
The Whitsundays are serviced by two domestic airports: Great Barrier Reef Airport on Hamilton Island has a connecting 30-minute ferry transfer to Daydream (airfares from $175 one way, ferry $50); or Whitsunday Coast Airport on the mainland at Proserpine (airfares from $179 one way). It's a 30-minute bus connection to Abel Point Marina in Airlie Beach, where a connecting ferry takes 30 minutes.
Staying there
Seven-night fly-stay packages are from $1445 a person, twin share, in a garden balcony room, between November 1 and December 16. Children four to 14 stay and eat for free. www.myqldholiday.com.au
More information
1800 075 040, daydreamisland.com.
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