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We moved up to townsville from airlie beach and moved into a lovely hostel. we spent a few days here, they have a great esplanade where everyone walks, runs, walks the dog and meets up with people, it seems really friendly and evreyone knows each other! we were even motivated to go for a couple a morning runs along the esplanade to fit in with the locals- crazy us! they have a laggon here too, but its more 'natural' than the airlie beach lagoon and so didnt look as inviting. we visited the big north tropical museum one day which was good, they have a famous shipwreck off the coast which is one of the top 10 dive sites in the world, there was a whole section in the museum about it, surprisingly interesting!
From townsville we caught the passenger ferry over to Magnetic island ( on the map to show you where we are you can see an island off of townsville with one bay named picnic bay), the ferry took us back to our red funnel days on the island! Magnetic island is a small (10km long, 10km wide) beautiful island with amazing scenery. we were staying at a fantastic B&B called Marshalls, much better than a hostel. they had such a beautiful queenslander house with great gardens and we loved it there. we spent 3 nights on maggie island as its known, we rented out scooters on our second day. that morning a warning had been given to residents about the earthquake in the solomon islands possibly causing a tsunami for us! great, we come to a small island and get a warning we could get washed away! the ferries were cancelled, the bank and schools evacuated, we were actually at the scooter hire place at the estimated time of the tsunami hitting us! turned out there was a massive 15cm increase in the water level around the island, the tsunami had gone the other way to hawaii! phew! the scooters were fantastic fun, on a small island they were perfect. we zoomed around all day and then took them back about 10am the next day, they were great for exploring all the small roads where the buses didnt go.
on our last day on maggie island after dropping our bikes off in nelly bay, we went on a 2hour hike up through the forest and hills over to arcadia bay where our hostel was, the views from the top of the ridge were great! we went for a lovely meal up in horseshoe bay in the evening and then the next day we caught the ferry back to townsville. we spent another night at the hostel there then up we went...Mission beach next.
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