This is the new Whitsundays experience only 15 people a day can access

On a tropical winter evening on Whitsunday Island, Bowarri yamba feels perfectly named. In the local Ngaro Aboriginal language, the name means "moon camp", and as dinner is served by our hiking guides, a near-full moon hauls itself into the night sky, emerging huge and red from the Coral Sea.

It's the end of our first day on the Ngaro Track, Australia's newest multi-day hiking trail. Running in an arc from Whitehaven Beach, the three-day hike, which launched in late April, covers 32 kilometres and is a look at Whitehaven Beach's backyard, unveiling areas of the island previously inaccessible to visitors.

From Shute Harbour, it's about 90 minutes by boat to the southern end of Whitehaven Beach. We've come early, arriving on the island about 8.30am, when the typically busy beach is empty of almost all but footprints. A green sea turtle lazes in the shallows, which are the kind of blue that holiday brochures are built on, and the famously white beach glows magnesium-bright in the sun.

Though we're here to hike, it's an island-time kind of start. By the time we stroll up to the Whitehaven Lookout and then swim, it's almost midday before we set out walking, leaving behind the sunseekers who've arrived through the morning like a timelapse and the goannas that strut about like landlords. This first day we need only walk 8.7 kilometres. Hurry is a thing we've left behind.

A cloud of blue tiger butterflies swirls around us as we step through the forest behind Whitehaven Beach and effectively enter our private slice of island. Each day, only 15 people are permitted to begin the Ngaro Track, with alternating daily departures between guided groups and independent hikers. I'm hiking in one of the first guided groups on the track with World Expeditions, following guides Dan and Max as the dazzle of Whitehaven Beach falls behind us.

Though the Ngaro Track is, in effect, a coastal walk, its views and swims are infrequent and well earned. There's immense variety in the bush that dominates the days - dry sclerophyll, palm-filled rainforest, hoop pines and mangroves - and this first day we step out of it only at Chance Bay, a slimmed-down version of Whitehaven Beach, its sands almost as white but just a few hundred metres long and typically empty of people.

Bowarri yamba isn't far beyond Chance Bay and our welcome is memorable. Atop an open rock slab near the camp, with the southern islands of the Whitsundays laid out like a still life behind, guides Fenna and Maeve await our arrival with silver-service trays of drinks.

The track's two camps were part of $14 million spent in constructing the Ngaro Track, with Bowarri yamba built atop a ridge that peers precipitously down into Silica Bay. At low tide, this bay drains to a sheet of white sand, but when it fills, its waters are so clear that even from high above, I can see rays swimming around the bay.

The camp is framed around an open-sided communal shelter with kitchen, dining area and steps that lead out onto the ridgetop rock. The spacious tents are set on wooden platforms in a horseshoe arc around the shelter, spaced for privacy and with comforts such as deck chairs and elevated stretcher beds.

Most striking of all are the camp toilets - the ultimate loos with a view, with their flyscreen windows framing a view of the craggy summit of Whitsunday Craig, the peak we must cross the next day.

Day two is the day the Ngaro Track reaches its literal heights, providing the steepest climbs and the vastest views. It's a day defined by Whitsunday Craig, but before we climb the 348-metre-high peak, we must first go down. And quickly.

From camp, it's a rapid descent into the track's first grove of hoop pines, the island's signature trees, their papery bark peeling like sunburned skin. The trees were once an industry - a sawmill operated on Whitsunday Island in the 19th century - and today they're a point of beauty.

The slopes of Whitsunday Craig are dotted with makeshift lookouts - points where the track emerges onto open rock or into breaks in the bush - some marked with distinctive wooden poles. The track was created in consultation with the Whitsunday Islands' Ngaro traditional owners, and these poles, which dot the track, are carved with Ngaro Dreaming stories, information and art. They're track markers, but so much more.

Though the Whitsunday Craig ascent isn't difficult, there is one chain-assisted section to navigate, climbing through an exposed rock slab, before rounding the summit and descending to this night's home at Dhula yamba (Tree Camp) in Torres Herald Bay.

Every tent platform at Dhula yamba, dotted among a thick grove of palms and hoop pines, is prime beachfront real estate. It's jungle and beach at once, fanned again around an open communal shelter. After Bowarri yamba, the toilet view is less immediately spectacular, but looking out onto the slim trunks and foliage of the palms, it feels a little like the platform of a tree-top walk.

The final day is the Ngaro Track's longest - 12.8 kilometres - but not necessarily its hardest, following the course of Hill Inlet, a waterway that almost cuts Whitsunday Island in half, back to the edge of Whitehaven Beach.

After an early alarm call of kookaburras, we're quickly on our way, crossing the wide stream on a 170-metre-long boardwalk through mangroves. Along Hill Inlet's edge, goannas watch down from tree trunks while snakes disappear into the undergrowth at our approach. At times, Hill Inlet comes into view below us, its white riverbed rippled into hypnotic sand patterns, with Whitsunday Craig rising behind and the tip of Tongue Point, the walk's finish, calling us ahead.

Stepping out onto Tongue Point's trio of lookout platforms it to step into the Whitsundays' most famous view, peering across the wispy sandbars at the mouth of Hill Inlet to Whitehaven Beach. And yet somehow this celebrated scene feels less remarkable after three days on foot through the country behind. Its beauty isn't dulled, but over the hours since I was first wowed by this sandy scene, Whitsunday Island has shown itself to be so much more than a beach.

The writer travelled courtesy of World Expeditions