The story
Air Whitsunday pioneered seaplane services to the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday Island in April 1973, using a Lake Buccaneer light amphibian aircraft. In 1977, it moved its operational base from Long Island in the Whitsunday Islands to Whitsunday Airport on the mainland, later purchasing the airport. By 1981, the airline was operating a fleet of five Buccaneers, which were supplemented by a Partenavia P.68 in 1982 and a Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander in 1983, which were used on sightseeing flights and for scheduled passenger services to Mackay Airport. 1983 also saw the airline purchase two Grumman Mallard amphibians to supplement the smaller Buccaneers on tourist flights out to the Barrier Reef as well as to run a scheduled service to Townsville.
From Wikipedia’s article on Air Whitsunday, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4