We spent a week in Townsville over Christmas, which was great as we met up with friends we’ve not seen for many years that we used to live near or work with in Brunei. Vicky and David showed us round the sprawl of Townsville, with its huge red rock (Castle Hill)
in the middle, the old Jazzine barracks (now a lovely park area with the Battle of the Coral Sea Memorial in), the lovely Strand walkway along the seafront with its interesting statues
and the stunning Mount Stuart where you can see for miles around at the top – and even find the odd Allied Rock Wallaby as we did!
We had a lovely breakfast and a couple of evenings catching up with Andy’s old work colleagues Buck and Wayne, too, and the 9-year gap since we last saw them just disappeared.
The rainbow parakeets, red-tailed black cockatoos, and curlews have entertained us with their antics, and it’s been lovely watching the huge fruit bats fly out every evening.
Oh, and of course, you can’t forget “Maggie” – Magnetic Island \ Yunbenun, that you can see from the shoreline and the little blue and white ferries crossing over with their passengers. It is a 20 minute ferry ride, which we managed to do one day after the rain stopped.
It was named Magnetic Island after Captain Cook called it magnetical as he thought it had disrupted his compass – lots of people have investigated the island since to try and find out why/if it really does have a magnetical source but nothing found so far.
We got the local bus to Picnic Bay and had a coffee then back on the bus to the other end of the island – Horseshoe Bay for lunch. Visitors stay for a couple of days as there are lots of tracks to explore, different bays to swim, dive or snorkel from (although we weren’t sure how that happens during stinger season which is now) and wildlife to see. We only had a few hours, but just going on the local bus gave us a good view of Maggie, and it was a cheap way to see it.
We’ve had varied weather from thunderstorms to blue skies, but through it all, it still stayed hot (and humid!!).
Thank you, Townsville.
Now we start the next leg of our trip – working our way down the coast to Brisbane on the Greyhound bus!!