Heaven Is Hayman Island at Edge of the Great Barrier Reef

From his vantage point hidden among the orchids on a giant tree fern outside my room, an owl surveys the activity in the air around him: ecstatic loop-the-loops by blue mountain parrots, the screeching complaint of magpies, the antics of a trio of cockatoos.

Disdainfully he swivels his head. He can’t be bothered and neither can I. After a week of slogging it out on the dusty back roads of Cape York Peninsula I’ve arrived in heaven, Australian-style.

Heaven is spelled Hayman, and this five-star resort on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef is just about the last thing you’d expect to find 20 miles from the mainland.

Hayman is the most northerly island of the Whitsunday chain, a string of 70-odd islands scattered in a 30-mile semicircle around the Queensland town of Shute Harbour. For years the Whitsundays have been the delight of boaters, campers and honeymooners, a cheap and accessible getaway for vacationing Australians who couldn’t afford the big trip to Tahiti, Hawaii or Fiji.

Besides being close, the Whitsundays offered soft subtropical breezes, a flat turquoise sea and proximity to the spectacular Great Barrier Reef, 36 miles from Shute Harbour.

Antiques and Modern Art

What one doesn’t expect in the Whitsunday chain are massive collections of antiques and modern art, an army of 380 attendants (for a maximum of fewer than 500 guests) and 24-hour room service.

You get sterling silver utensils, gold-plated faucets in the washrooms, Australian marble and Queensland sandstone throughout, black-tie dining in a fine French restaurant, handmade chocolates, a formal English country garden, Louis XVI decor and Waterford crystal chandeliers.

The tony extravagance of Hayman became obvious the minute we boarded the Sun Goddess at nearby Hamilton Island. It’s a $3-million catamaran done up in Art Deco pastels, teak, stainless steel and soft easy chairs and sofas. During the 45-minute trip through the Whitsunday Passage to Hayman, we completed our check-in details and had our bags tagged for delivery to our hotel rooms.

Hayman, unlike other islands in the Whitsundays, is lush (at least around the hotel) with trees, ferns, bushes, flowers, orchids and palms. The low scrub and brush common to the islands has been pushed back to the hills with the best landscaping that money could buy.

Strolling onto the lanai where one of the hotel’s reception areas was set up underneath a three-story roof, my impression was of a tropical pocket of elegance, civility, good taste and big bucks, plopped down here in the subtropics.

Cockatoos darted by while guests sat at wicker tables, sipping coffee served in sterling silver pots. Beyond the reception area I could see a massive pool where people were lazily swimming circular laps. Beyond it lay the sparkling green-blue of the Whitsunday Passage, dotted with white sails.

After settling in and changing out of our dusty Cape York clothes, we paused to consider our options.

As might be expected, Hayman has water sports galore: water skiing, snorkeling, game fishing (for marlin and tuna), windsurfing, parasailing, bottom fishing (for such delicacies as coral trout, red emperor or sweet lip), day and sunset cruises around the passage as well as diving and walking tours of the Great Barrier Reef, 45 minutes away.

Hayman has a full-feature dive shop for scuba enthusiasts or those with a desire to learn. What better place to get your diving certificate than within an hour of some of the most spectacular reefs in the world?

Avoiding the Water

Or one might avoid the water altogether. You could go for the tennis courts, snooker table, videos for rent, or a large library full of hard-cover novels and games. A fully equipped gymnasium with spa and a mini-golf course are scheduled to be completed soon.

We headed first to the giant circular saltwater pool for a dip and a bite. Over a lunch of Lagoon Salad (coral trout fillets, prawns, and salad tossed with Italian dressing) and a Yakka drink (passion fruit, pineapple, pawpaw and banana), we decided on a catamaran sail.

From out in the shallow waters of the passage the resort takes on different proportions. It sits huddled against the hills of the four-square-kilometer island, a low-lying enclave of exuberant foliage and red-and-white buildings. It looks perfect. Even the beaches (which are raked every day) look immaculate.

But it wasn’t always this way. Sir Reginald Ansett, founder of Ansett Airlines (the parent company that owns Hayman) bought the island in the early ‘50s for 10,000, a price decided upon by the number of goats then living here.

When the first version of Hayman was completed in 1953 it quickly became known as a homey honeymooner’s delight, and for three decades newlyweds would head for the island the same way that many American couples head for Niagara Falls.

Three years ago the old resort was razed and $150 million worth of construction began, $5 million alone going to landscaping. More than 660,000 plants, 900 north Queensland coconut palms and 20 27-foot date palms from Victoria’s Swan Hill were brought in.

A hectare’s worth of swimming pools were built, a circular saltwater pool that is as big as five Olympic-size pools and a smaller freshwater pool, surrounded by walkways of Gosford sandstone shaded by huge white Italian market umbrellas.

“We’ve been all over the world to many lovely places, but I think this is the most fabulous place I’ve ever been,” said Mary Ellen Rooney, a visitor from Rolling Hills. “It’s just so beautiful: the marble, the artwork, everything. There’s not a thing out of place.”

Even mentioning the word budget in the luxurious surroundings of Hayman seems a slight faux pas, and certainly any ‘50s honeymooner returning for a romantic anniversary will be shocked by the change.

The room rates are steep by Australian standards, running from $160 U.S. for the garden court rooms to more than $1,000 U.S. a day for the penthouse apartments. But you get what you pay for; high rollers in the penthouses, for example, have a butler included in the rent.

In a beachfront room overlooking the saltwater pool one finds a refrigerator, a digitally controlled safe, balcony awnings with automatic controls, a VCR, three telephones, a massive bathtub, hair dryer and a full assortment of complimentary toiletries. The beds are enormous and boast pure linen sheets with feather pillows.

Showpieces of Resort

The artwork at Hayman, known officially as the Hayman Collection, is the showpiece of the resort. The multimillion-dollar collection is scattered throughout the hotel, with an original watercolor painting in each room.

Most of the watercolors are by young Australian artists while many of the oil paintings in public areas are by established names: Ray Crooke, Charles Blackman, John Coburn, Robert Juniper, John Olsen and Stanislav Rapotec.

Besides the paintings, sculptures by artists such as Barbara Tribe and Nickalaus Seffrin are on display in the restaurants and other public areas. The main lobby is set off with the 1920s acrylic sculpture “Dawn: the Reclining Woman” by Australian Arthur Fleschmann (valued at more than $100,000).

And it’s not just contemporary art on view at Hayman. Antiques from around the world are included in the collection: giant Spanish oil urns around the lanai, elaborate Chinese dressers in the corridors, a pair of 16th-Century Burmese monastery doors near the shops, an 1870 English snooker table in the wood-paneled English Club lounge.

The combination of architectures (English, Polynesian, resort and continental) mixed with the presence of so much fine art can leave your head spinning. Like William Randolph Hearst’s castle at San Simeon, there’s almost too much to absorb, which may be just what was intended.

“I was just trying to create a beautiful hotel,” said Sydney-based designer Philip Silver. “The basic thing is you’re on an island and if you’re here for five days it’s got to interest you and you’ve got to have something different all the time.

“Without trying to make it too Disneyland-ish, the best way to do that was to have it so people could put on a black tie one night and go to dinner and the next night they could go to a Polynesian restaurant. The philosophy was to make it as residential as possible, to make it more like visiting somebody’s home rather than staying in a grand hotel.”

And if the decor sounds tasteful, just wait until you get to the food.

“You cannot compare (food at Hayman) to any other resort in Australia or even Europe,” said executive chef Andre Perez. “We’re the best. When you go on a holiday in Whitsunday Passage you don’t expect to have a gourmet treat. You go to an island and it’s very casual. Here it’s different. You come to have a food experience at the same time that you’re having a holiday.”

Like the Great Barrier Reef (the home of much of the fresh fish at Hayman), an overwhelming selection is available. There are eight kitchens at Hayman, five for the restaurants (French, Polynesian, Japanese, Italian and Creole) and three for the 24-hour room service facilities.

High-Quality Food

Despite the distance from the mainland, high-quality food is the norm rather than the exception. The 60 chefs make everything from homemade breads and pastries to butter, pasta, ice cream and sorbets, olive oil, vinegars and chocolates. Salad greens, fresh herbs and French beans are grown exclusively for Hayman by farmers at Bowen on the Queensland mainland.

An extensive selection of international wines is kept in the cellar: the old swimming pool. A bottle of local Tisdall Mt. Helen Chardonnay runs around $20 while a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne costs about $110.

“The first thing I noticed when I arrived was the water,” said Perez, who had his own restaurant in Sydney for 18 years. “That’s been fixed, but then I had to bring in salt from New South Wales, 2,000 kilometers away. I had to develop the right quality of butter, the fat content of the cream, the right flour.

“I think (the food) is the most important factor here, as important as the service and the comfort of the guests. We have our own cooking line, like a couturier has a fashion line. Hayman is to be the epitome of cooking. That is our final aim.”

Fine cuisine, fine art and exceptional service. According to Denis Richard, executive general manager (formerly of the President Hotel in Geneva), that is the Hayman experience.

“Hayman mixes whatever is available in the best resorts in the world,” he said. “We picked up ideas from all over the place and tried to do our best and provide a new experience.

“And we tried to stay Australian. Lots of Australians travel overseas to get the experience they couldn’t get here. They met some very expensive things which they now can find here at an attractive price.”

By international five-star standards, Hayman may be a bargain, but there have been some grumblings by locals that the island is just too expensive for Australian tourists. And the minimum dress code for some facilities--jacket and tie for men in La Fontaine, the French restaurant, for example--is not what one expects at an Aussie island retreat. Indeed, sitting around the pool, one notices quickly that the staff members are usually better dressed than the guests.

“We’re not going to eat in the French restaurant,” Tom Rooney told me. “I’m sure it’s very good but I don’t want to wear a tie. I can wait to eat in a French restaurant in Sydney.”

Still, when the time came to board the Sun Goddess for our trip back to the mainland, the high living at Hayman seemed hard to leave. As we waited in the airport at Hamilton for our flight to Sydney, I found myself smugly eyeing my fellow passengers. True, they may have spent more time and less money lounging on other islands in the Whitsundays, but I’ve had a glimpse of heaven.

Bookings and travel arrangements for Hayman may be made at Ansett Airlines in Los Angeles, phone (213) 642-7487. For more information, contact the Australian Tourist Commission, 2121 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1200, Los Angeles 90067, phone (213) 552-1988.