Personally, I'm not big on queues, and prefer to avoid them wherever possible, but accept there are circumstances where queuing is inevitable.
Getting a reasonable go at enjoying a spectacular view and getting a decent photographic record of it is, of course, one of those circumstances.
As you near the crest that gives you the panoramic view the track divides, with a fairly clear indication it's meant for one way traffic. That, apparently, didn't fit with the vigorous intentions of what appeared to be an enthusiastic group of French aquanauts who seemed to want to get the sightseeing out of the way ASAP so they could get on with the important bit.
As a result, they'd opted to go against the flow, jostling their way in to get the odd snap and moving on without too much apparent concern for anyone who might be silly enough to get in the way.
It's quite possible that, even without the galloping Gallophones, the crowd factor would have rendered the sightseeing side of a visit to a quite magnificent vista into the realm of the sub-optimal, but their presence didn't help.
As I stood on the beach waiting for the tender to collect us I couldn't help noting the continual arrival and departure of vessels with their own quotas of sightseers and ended up concluding the aerial option might be the way to go next time around, because there certainly will be a next time,
And when it arrives I'd like a decent non-jostled look at Hill Inlet and a panoramic overview of the whole Whitehaven shebang.
Not that there was too much in the way of jostling once we'd been ferried back to Mantaray and skipper Cookie had wended his way to a suitably deserted section of South Whitehaven. We had what must have been close to an hour ashore while the crew set things up for lunch on board, and an hour may well have been a tad excessive, but it certainly gave you time to enjoy the vista, marvel at the fine grained texture of sand that certainly steeled capable of finding its way into anything (careful with those cameras, folks) and muse on the tranquility and the contrast with the almost push and shove (an exaggeration, perhaps, but a slight one).
Lunch provided another opportunity to gripe about the lack of consideration on the part of certain people of apparent European extraction. We'd been sharing a six seat table with an older (actually, around Hughesy's age, but you catch my drift) Australian couple, and had snagged seats on the first tender shuttle back on board. An early start and hunger will do that to you.