Hill Inlet lookout: the walk, the tide and which tours stop there

Hill Inlet is a tidal inlet at the northern end of Whitehaven Beach, where the seven kilometres of silica sand run out and a shallow estuary opens behind the point. Twice a day the tide pushes in across the sand flats and twice a day it pulls out again, and because the sand is so fine and so white, the water carries it in long fingers and ribbons that you can see from the lookout above. The pattern is never the same twice. On a low tide the banks are wide and the ribbons are broad; on a high tide the whole inlet is blue and the swirl is a suggestion.

That is why the same view photographed by a thousand people looks a thousand different ways, and why the skippers on the day boats talk about the tide table more than the weather. The colour comes from depth: turquoise where the water is a metre deep over white sand, deeper blue in the channel, green at the mangrove edge.

From the platform you look south down the whole length of Whitehaven and north across the inlet to the hills of Whitsunday Island, with no building anywhere in the frame. It is the one place in the islands where the postcard is exactly what you see.

Every Whitsundays boat tour that visits the Hill Inlet lookout anchors in Tongue Bay, on the western side of the point, and lands you by tender on a small beach. From there a marked track climbs through dry bush to the lookout. It is about a kilometre with steps, and it takes twenty minutes at a walking pace with a few stops for the view opening up behind you. The track was rebuilt with a boardwalk and two viewing platforms, so it is well made and easy to follow; the shoes matter more than the fitness.

At the top there are two platforms. The first gives the classic view down the inlet; the second, a few minutes further, looks along the beach. Most groups spend twenty to thirty minutes up there. Then the boats do one of two things: walk you back down to Tongue Bay and motor round the point to the beach, or, on the day cruises with a picnic, walk you over the saddle and down to the northern end of Whitehaven itself, where the tender meets you.

The $170 day and the $171 day both build the afternoon around this: the lookout first, then the beach on the other side.

Two things decide how the lookout looks: the tide and the light. Low tide widens the sand banks and makes the swirl; morning light comes from behind the platform and turns the water its bluest. The day cruises leave Airlie Beach around eight and reach Tongue Bay around ten, so they get the lookout late morning, and on a good tide that is very good.

The overnight yachts have an advantage the day boats cannot buy. They are already at anchor in Tongue Bay when the sun comes up, so the crew walk you to the lookout at seven, before the first catamaran has left the marina. Twelve people on the platform, the light low, and whatever the tide is doing, you have time to watch it change. Our top pick at $372 does this, and so do $307, $424 and $497. It is the hour that people who have done both days remember.

From the air there is no walk and no tide table: the scenic flight at $213 and the fly-and-raft day at $402 pass over the inlet at a few hundred metres and show the whole pattern at once, which the platform can only show in part.

Cheapest walk up: $170, late morning with lunch on board, 1,052 reviews.

Best hour: $372, our top pick, on the platform at seven before anyone else has left the marina.

Whole pattern: $213, seventy minutes over the inlet, the beach and Heart Reef, 2,286 reviews at 4.8.

Every Whitsundays boat tour that lands at Tongue Bay walks up. What you are choosing is the hour of the day you stand there, and the tide when you do. Book a few weeks ahead and let the skipper read the table.