Day 4 - Magnetic Island

Early rise again, which is becoming a habit. We pottered for the first hour, cup and tea, breakfast, did some laundry and tidied Frank up and then showered; we were finally ready for the day ahead and our destination of Magnetic Island.

We stopped by a retail park to purchase a new iPad cable. The park was huge, immense in scale. Like the Beehive Centre only 10x larger and less stressful too!

We caught the ferry to Maggie Island. Pristine beaches and crystal blue waters greeted us as we arrived at Port. After looking at the brochure we decided to hire a scooter, to see the whole island, unfortunately no staff were their to greet us after a 2k walk in 34C! In our wisdom we decided to walk back 2k to hire a car, which was right next to the port entrance, the car was called a "Topless Moke". Imagine Barbies car with a lawn mower engine, deathtrap! The tyre noise suggested we needed to ease off the gas around the unfenced bends! We visited Horseshoe Bay first. The 2k stretch of beach was golden under the blistering sun. We put down our bags and took the the glistening sea. The water felt like a hot bath, not quite as cooling on the seas back in England. Clarkey wasn't too keen on the seaweed so wouldn't go past her knees...wimp! However an unexpected wave caught Clarkey off guard giving her a very wet crotch for the next hour! We sunbathed and read a short while, all the time searching for shade. Clarkey got hunger pangs, so we went in search of food. To our major disappointment we have missed lunch service in all restaurants, bar the Fish & Chip takeaway. Mackerel and chips it was again!

On a full tummy we went in search of the elusive Koala. There was a 3k bush walk up the hill to an old abandoned Fort. By bush I mean wild and by wild I mean the warning signs said "stick to trial" and "beware Death Adders". Holly was in need of clean pants to say the least, and stuck to the centre of the path the whole journey. It was all uphill and narrow and every noise had us both on tenterhooks. We finally made it to the top where the temp was around 36C, but no Koala's were seen. We managed to walk down in half the time, all the while looking for Koala's and snakes! Holly sprinted past every spider and breaking twig which helped with the fast walk down!

We then drove to a little bay called Arcadia, which was idyllic. We then followed this up by skating across to Picnic Bay, our last beach. Not a soul on the beach, so far apart from a weekend at Hunstanton! We dropped off our Topless and caught the 5pm ferry home. On the stroll back to Frank we got an ice cream at Gelatissimo. It hosted an amazing array of flavours, piled high in the fridges. It was like Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. We drove back to camp on Bruce HW and crashed out for the evening, with a book and glass of sprite and beans on toast! Hard to the core!