Cairns isn’t just for the Great Barrier Reef. Just tow hours north is a rainforest with deadly crocodiles, virginal beaches, refreshing creeks and at least one bat.

Two hours into the sailing trip, Dave, the divemaster, brought out the pedophile jokes.

He had already riled the Irish on board (“Your body is 80 percent water, except for the Irish, which are 30 percent alcohol”) but was still several hours from touching on race (“Why is Stevie Wonder always smiling? He doesn’t know he’s black”).

It was, to be sure, an alarming start to a three-day cruise around the Whitsunday Islands.

We were 23 squeezed aboard the Apollo, a racing yacht that had won a Sydney-to-Hobart regatta. Like a used-up racehorse, the once-mighty sailboat was put out to stud, spending its golden years taking backpackers on diving trips and ivory beaches along the Great Barrier Reef.

We were given bunk beds that hugged the inside of the hull and were strikingly comfortable considering the tight quarters. Normally reserved for a full crew of 25, the boat was carrying a measly three crew members plus a backpacker that worked as cook and deck hand.

It was, we later learned, a much better deal than other budget options, like the 70-person booze cruise whose guests must spend the night on a land hostel.

The days are just packed

The crew wasted no time. Once out of the Airlie Beach marina, the Apollo headed for an island with a bustling reef. With such a skeletal crew, the passengers have to pitch in. The skipper put three men to hoist the main sail, myself included, and two on the head sail, while two ladies were stationed on a winch.

The head sail was so heavy that by the last four pulls of the rope, we had to lift our feet off the ground and let our combined body weight do the work. We watched with a disproportionate sense of accomplishment as the sails swelled and the boat tilted to the left, cruising at a laudable 10 knots.

It was an hour until we were moored at a tiny sandy cove surrounded by dense jungle. It was where we would receive our free diving lesson. That’s when Dave felt it was safe to introduce the pedophile jokes.

“What does a five year old’s penis smell like,” he asked. No one volunteered an answer, and I presumed no one really cared to know. But Dave, a fortysomething Aussie browned and leathered by so much sun and salt, indulged us anyhow: he exhaled loudly so we could smell his breath.

Lunchtime at the Apollo

The diving was everything you’d expect from the Great Barrier Reef: neon-coloured wrasses, rainbow corals, sea turtles that look like slightly bored spaceships, polka-dotted stingrays, little Nemos poking out from the anemone.

For first time divers, Dave wanted to minimize the stress, so he took five people at a time and told us to disregard the oxygen gauge and the buoyancy vests; he took care of those himself.

On top of the usual hand signals divers use to communicate under water, he taught us a few more: a W made by touching one’s thumbs together signifies “wow”. Placing the right hand on one’s head and thrusting the left hand through the resulting loop meant “fucking great”.

“If you’re German,” Dave elaborated, “you do it from behind,” and proceeded to do the same thrusting motion, but with his left hand penetrating from behind his head.

After half an hour under water, we exchanged scuba gear for snorkels and explored the reef while the next divers had their turn.

When dusk approached we were bused back to the Apollo on the life raft. The shower, they informed us, were small hoses attached to the sink in the telephone cabin-sized toilets. The minimal floorspace meant for one’s feet while using the bowl is also the shower floor. Despite it all, it felt great.

By nightfall the Apollo was safely moored a few hundred feet from an island. Amply fed, passengers broke open the beer cases and bags of goon that were perfectly chilled in three giant coolers.

Nighttime at the Apollo

Day 2: The postcard beach

By 8pm the Apollo’s diesel engine was humming. The sleeping deck began to smell like a truckers’ rest stop. The passengers that weren’t hungover were clutching plastic mugs with instant coffee or tea.

The boat was heading towards the Whitsundays’ postcard spot, Whitehaven Beach. No boat actually moors on the beach; they drop you off on the other side of the island and let you hike 15 minutes to the famous bay.

Whitehaven Beach encapsulates so much of the Australian condition. Like the country, it’s devastatingly gorgeous, but it’s crawling with things that want to hurt you.

Bianca’s rendition of the stereotypical jumping beach shot

The sand is as white and as fine as powdered sugar. The sea is impossible shade of topaz. But no one dares enter the water. It’s the tail end of jellyfish season, and irrikandji could still be floating around.

These jellyfish are no larger than a navy bean and nearly impossible to see. But their sting, we were told, burns like the devil’s hot poker and persists for days. The only first aid is splashing the sting with vinegar, which kills the venomous cells that stick to the skin.

Urinating on the wound, Dave informed us, is an old wife’s tale. “If you do get stung, don’t let any Germans know, or they’ll come running three at a time to pee on you.”

Lunch aboard the Apollo was followed by snorkel time at another reef. Diving from now on cost AUS$60. No matter. The reef had more lovely sea life, including a gigantic humphead wrasse.

Back at the boat, cases of beer and box wine still weighed down the vessel. The passengers were only too happy to relieve the weight.

Day 3: feeding frenzy

Our final beach for diving was carpeted not with sand but dead corals, and so it’s painful to walk on barefoot. Wearing flippers relieved the pain but made walking impossible. The only solution was to cautiously walk backwards. With flippers. On a coral cove. Throw a bunch of African tribesmen on a skating rink and they couldn’t look as awkward as we did.

The fish in this reef have long ago equated people with food, so snorkelers are quickly surrounded by schools of hopeful fish. I brought along a bag with the final crumbs of my breakfast cereal and suddenly it became a riot. We couldn’t see one metre in any direction, so thick they huddled. Swift little bastards, it’s impossible to catch one with your hands.

We let out a collective, bubbly underwater squeal when Elvis, the resident humphead wrasse, showed up. He had a kingly and comically blasé look that said, “Let’s see what these idiots brought me today.”

Uninterested by the muesli I released into the water, he seemed more intrigued by the cereal bag itself, which I held above the water. He tried to go for it three times with the speed and intensity of someone who has a whole day to do absolutely nothing. We ran our hands over his smooth and slippery flat body. More squeals.

Our last meal was a medley of leftover fro the previous two days. The food aboard the Apollo is not luxurious, but it’s far better than the standard backpacker fare of pasta and mushy stir-fry. In the three past days we had barbecued steaks and sausages, roast chicken, fetuccini carbonara, pumpkin risotto, garlic bread, and lots of salads. By the end of it, we were hopelessly enamoured with Michelle, the sightly English girl working as the cook.

The Apollo once again hoisted its sails and howled back to Airlie Beach. It tilted so far this time that we had to all sit on the opposite side, lest we slide to starboard and swept by the sea licking at the deck.

The skipper thanked us for our business and received a raucous applause. Dave made a few more inappropriate jokes, but by this time we were inoculated to any offense from his lips.

Some of us went up to him to shake his hand and have at least one moment of sincere interaction with our divemaster who led us to a dazzling underwater world and gave us memories for life. Dave looked agonizingly unfomrfortable with the candour and quickly defused the situation with a joke involving homo-erotic buggery.

Dave, divemaster

Everyone – and I mean everyone – who took the canoe trip up the Noosa River got it for free. Tribal Travel, an agency ubiquitous in Australia, is throwing it in when you book other classic tours like Fraser Island on a 4WD and sailing on the Whitsundays.

While they’re clearly trying to promote this lesser-known trip, it has two major problems: a) it’s not really free, and b) it totally acts like it’s free.

Point (a) is simply a matter of deceptive marketing. They give you the trip for no money up front but you have to pay $69 AUD in park fees and insurance to the tour operator. Tribal doesn’t see a cent, and so it’s free for them.

Promotional flyers for this trip price it at $140. So what you’re getting is a 50 percent discount on the advertised rate.

As for point (b), think back to the freebies you’ve been offered. A pen for signing up to a credit card. A crappy T-shirt. All of them of expendable quality.

The pointless part

A van picks you up from your Noosa hostel early in the morning and takes you to a lakeside station where a crater-faced fellow wearing – unironically – a trucker cap gives you two-seater canoes, tents, cooking stoves, and waterproof drums for your belongings.

He then hands you a crayon drawing of the lakes and rivers of the area. After a curt “See you in three days” he vanishes.

To call it a map would be a riotous overstatement. The river forks and splits in far more places than the doodle suggests, making it easy to turn into the wrong lake, turn around, and take another inlet to the same dead end.

This is a refreshing change from the excessively safe and controlled tours of the Queensland coast. Getting briefly lost in a tea-coloured river flanked by dense bush, one can almost call it an adventure.

But this laissez-faire approach goes too far when you learn that 1) when you arrive at your campsite at 2 pm, you will have the rest of the day to do precisely nothing at all, and 2) that park rangers patrol the camps and ask to see a camping permit, which the tour operator does not provide you with.

There are no walking trails around the campsite, nothing that would warrant arriving there so early. So one is left with two options: get back on the canoes, backtrack for one hour and explore the lakes we passed on the way, or start drinking.

Everyone chose the second option.

The Cooloola Sandpatch

The part that matters

The highlight of the trip is the second day, in which you paddle 1.5 hours upstream then hike for another 1.5 hours to the Cooloola Sandpatch. This is a huge erosion in the middle of the forest where winds hoarded enough sand to make it unlivable for plants. You can spend a good three hours wandering around and imagining it a lifeless desert with a gorgeous ocean view.

This three-day trip could easily be condensed into two: paddle up to the sandpatch, camp, come back the next day.

The third day is hardly a day at all. You are asked to report back to the lakeside station by 9:30 where no one is waiting. After roughly two hours spent killing mosquitoes for fun, the next batch of campers arrive, and you can finally return to your hostel in Noosa.

If the point of this promotional “freebie” is to popularize it by word of mouth, it can be deemed an absolute failure. When I asked other travelers if they too took the trip, many replied, “I was about to, but someone told me it wasn’t worth it.”

To the same extent as buyers, sellers also get exactly what they pay for.