Hamilton, Australia's first, most popular and best-known resort on the Whitsunday Island archipelago, looks fabulous in photographs.
There is, for example, a much-reproduced shot of a handsome guy crashed out on his sunlounger, lapped by a perfect turquoise sea, dark green islands on the horizon. It looks at least half-way to paradise.
So where better, my wife Sarah and I thought, to base ourselves for a few days of rest and recuperation at the end of an all too brief tour Down Under? We needed to feel the sand under our feet and spend a few lazy days before the gruelling flight home.
We wanted peace, quiet, good food and some diving and snorkelling; the brochures said we could get it all in the Whitsundays, and the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef was only a boat ride away.
The trouble was, after we'd picked Hamilton Island, people started to tell us things about it that made us think that perhaps we'd chosen the wrong place.
"It's very crowded," they said. "Nice, but over-developed," said others.
"We wish we'd gone to Hayman," said someone else. But it was too late to change, and how could anywhere that looks that good in the photos be a mistake?
Doubts did, however, multiply when I consulted the essential Whitsunday Island companion, 100 Magic Miles by David Colfelt, in whose pages I found an illustrated section entitled "Avoiding Tropical Hazards".
Apparently, if the sunlounger guy in the picture had been foolish enough to take his holiday during a spell of onshore northerly winds (and particularly between November and May) and, fancying a dip, flopped into that waveless and inviting sea, he would stand a reasonable chance of being stung by a virtually invisible irukandji jellyfish.
Although he might, to start with, hardly notice the sting (suffering only slight irritation and a goose-pimpling effect), within half an hour his lower back would be agony and he would have excruciating muscle pain in his limbs, abdomen and chest.
If this wasn't enough, he would also probably experience a species of anxiety known by experts as "a sense of impending doom". Which was pretty much what we were starting to feel as we waited for our Jetstar flight to Hamilton from Brisbane.
Not only did we fight a losing and expensive battle with the airline about the weight of our bags (the fact that travellers may come from the other side of the world cuts no ice with the luggage police), but we were beginning to wonder where we could acquire the tattoos and piercings that appeared, from the look of our fellow-travellers, to be compulsory for this leg of the trip.
Our mood wasn't improved by a long wait for our guilty belongings, nor the scrummaging skills required to extract them from the open trailer on which they eventually arrived. The sky may have been blue, but there was thunder brewing below.
We needed a good and relaxing lunch, but our hopes of getting it dwindled as we buzzed from the airport in one of the golf buggies that were crawling all over the tarmac roads. The marina was thronged with people.
And then, treating ourselves to a short tour on the way to our hotel and from a viewpoint above Catseye Bay, we realised that if photo guy had turned around to face land he would have seen a set of hotel tower blocks that would, if they had been built in an inner city, have been pulled down after decades of crime-ridden mayhem. That first lunch was going to have to be good, or we were on the next flight back to Brissie.
And guess what? It was good. Very, very good. A cool cucumber soup and fresh squid washed down with a chilled sauvignon blanc at the Beach Club. And although our hotel looked less than prepossessing from the outside (the Reef View is one of the offending tower blocks), the east-facing views from our room on the top floor were sensational.
After unwinding with a stroll on the beach in the afternoon (where was everyone else?), we had an excellent (and reasonable) Italian meal for dinner at Romanos. We began to enjoy using our golf buggy; no problems with parking, and just speedy enough on the flat to generate a cooling breeze on the cheeks in the sultry evening heat.
The next day we took a scenic flight to the Barrier Reef. Despite a full load (four Japanese honeymoon couples and us), the float plane - after an off-spinner's run up at what seemed like jogging pace - clambered into the air. The views of the Whitsundays were impressive; humps of vegetation, yellow-lined coves and a few boats dotted around, casting shadows on the sand beneath their hulls.
But they were nothing compared to the reef, which appeared below us 15 minutes later. Blooms of purple coral lay next to ribs of underwater vegetation and brown reefs, splattered about as if dumped from above, and interrupted occasionally by puddles of duck-egg blue.
In the shallow waters we picked out sharks and turtles. As an occasional diver, I never predicted I'd see my first manta ray from hundreds of feet up in the air.
The Japanese were quiet, until we saw Heart Reef (a coral outcrop in the shape of a love heart) for the first time. Long lenses were raised to the windows amidst excited chatter. We flew over it for several minutes before wheeling away and back to land at Whitehaven Beach.
If there is a more beautiful beach in the world - at least in terms of the classic combination of long white sand strip and turquoise sea - I have yet to see it. There's something irresistible, too, about disembarking into this postcard landscape from the steps of an aeroplane.
The next few days passed in a happy haze of boat trips, snorkelling, strolling on the marina at Hamilton Harbour, having drinks and snacks on decks overlooking bobbing yachts and eating out at Hamilton's many and varied restaurants.
The shopping was good, too - not too expensive (despite the captive audience) and achieved without having to worry about how to carry a wallet in your swimming trunks, as all the shops - and restaurants - will put what you spend on your hotel bill.
On our last evening, as we watched the sunset - alone - from the spectacular viewpoint of Passage Peak (a 90-minute walk from the hotel), we wondered again where everyone was. Even at 100 per cent capacity the island has enough nooks and crannies that you can escape easily. If the main drag seems too much you can walk with a picnic to Escape Beach, or take off on a boat to a quiet cove.
If you want a family holiday in a beautiful and accessible place, you can have it. If you want luxury, there is the five-star Beach Club and rumours are circulating of ultra-luxurious "six-star" villas about to open off North Point. The fact that if we wanted a swim in the sea we had to sport a "stinger suit" - a thin wetsuit - to ward off attack by jellyfish didn't seem too high a price to pay.
On our way back from the peak, the wildlife took its turn to try to put us off the place. A kookaburra laughed like an evil killer; yellow-crested cockatoos shrieked like pterodactyls. But it was too late. We'd come to Hamilton Island and survived. And we'd go again.
