GLORIOUS HAMMO
On Whit Sunday In June 1770, an English sailor, Lt. James Cook and his 93 British naval sailors aboard HMS Endeavour, sailed into a 74-island Great Barrier Reef archipelago, which Cook named the Whitsunday Islands.
Over the next 200 years a larger island, first named Terra Australis, grew from its native people and then convict inhabitants plant sugar cane fields, build coastal towns, roads and airports. In 1983, an Australian property developer began building a tropical resort on one of those 74 islands, Hamilton Island.
“Despite ankle-deep mud, it was a booming success”
On the mainland, the charter yacht industry was burgeoning, and two industry pioneers proposed a yachting regatta and Hamilton Island Race Week was born.
When the first event was staged in 1984, the resort was very much a work in progress, all the roads were gravel, although the first arms of the marina were in place.
Two days into this inaugural regatta, a cyclone appeared in the Coral Sea to the north.
