Airlie Beach to Townsville

Just saw a "Big mango" with its own tourist information centre. Only in Australia...

Quite fancy a mango now.

Townsville

We arrived here on Wednesday and Anna picked us up. We saw the main streets of Townsville that afternoon and walked along The Strand, which looks rather different to its London counterpart, being lined with palm trees, children's playgrounds and a sandy tropical beach.
Thursday, we were going to go to Magnetic Island but we missed the ferry so we went to see where Anna studies, where they have some cool fish, like Nemo fish and some other pretty tropical fish. Then we went to the Bilabong Sanctuary, a native wildlife park just south of the city that was badly damaged by Cyclone Yasi a few months back. They have done a great job to get open again but they still have some work to finish.

The Bilabong Sanctuary was really good. They have free roaming kangaroos lying around sunbathing and you can buy seed to feed them with. They are surprisingly gentle eaters. They have teeth kind of like rabbits but they don't bite your hand, they just brush it with their chins, which are lovely and soft. Some of them are happy to be stroked and they're soft. Several females had joeys in their pouches. They got out sometimes but then they'd dive back in head first, often leaving a leg or tail sticking out. Then the head would re-emerge with the stray leg over one shoulder. It didn't look too comfy for the mum or the joey. One of the adults got hold of the paper bag that was in my hand then pulled it away. I lost that one because my other hand was full of camera. So the seed fell on the ground where the other roos ate it, while the cheeky thief ate the remains of the paper bag. I tried to get it off her but she wanted to eat it. I was cleverer though and had bought a spare bag of food.

The kangaroos use their little hands to grab your hand and they hold on to it to make sure you don't move away. They hold on with their claws but they're gentle enough that they don't hurt.
We also fed the turtles which populate the lake and share it with a few eels, some geese, other water birds such as ibises and a large population of whistling ducks, which made a lot of noise. The turtles were slow but funny when they climbed on each other to get to the fish. They are snapper turtles and one of them managed to get Anna's finger which I suppose must have looked like the raw fish we were feeding them.

Then they got a female dingo out, who was like a tame dog, not a dangerous wild animal, but I suppose it is all about the upbringing. She had a soft glossy coat and seemed more interested in licking people's faces than attacking anything. She obviously loves the attention. She lay across Anna's lap.

Then it was crocodile feeding time. These weren't free range and they weren't allowed out of their enclosures but the 2 keepers went in only armed with a bamboo stick, which they tied food to. They waved the food around to try to get the crocs to strike, but most seemed too lazy to move. We did see some dramatic strikes though and got some cool photos.

After the crocodile show, most of the other visitors seemed to disappear home. We saw the fresh water crocs, who are apparently not really a danger to people, but I wouldn't take the chance!

They didn't have many reptiles on show because they were still rebuilding from the cyclone damage. We saw some birds. There were 3 colourful parrots in an aviary, one of whom said "hello" at regular intervals. There were a few cockatoos around sitting on perches on trees including a female sulphur crested one who had been named Jacko by a past owner who didn't know how to tell the difference between a Jack and a Jackie. We met a black cockatoo called Mojo who was new to meeting people and being carried around on a keeper's hand.
He took sunflower seeds out of my hand and shelled and ate them very delicately.

I liked that we got to pat a koala without paying for a photo. They have about 10 koalas who apparently all have different 'jobs' - some are for breeding, some are happy to be cuddled, like a baby called Noah, and then the older guys, who don't do cuddles, but are happy to be patted. We met one of the latter, a guy called Ray Charles, who had a tragic life story worthy of an X-Factor contestant. The poor little guy lost his mum to a car at a young age and was hand reared, then released but was found just a few weeks later having been attacked by a dog, leaving him with almost no eyesight. So he had been retired to the wildlife sanctuary, where he hugged his tree and welcomed visitors to pat him. So we did that, and we took photos.

The final character we met was the world famous Tonka. He's a 2 year old common wombat, who was hand raised in the house of the owner of the sanctuary. He's like a little bear. He followed his keepers out for his afternoon run, trotting along like a puppy dog. Everyone else seemed to have disappeared by then so we had Tonka to ourselves. The first thing he did was to bound up joyfully and sink his teeth into my shoe. Then he went for my shins, which were at about his eye level. He apparently does this because he has to gnaw on things to wear his teeth down. I put up with it till he got a large chunk of my leg in his mouth, when I expressed discomfort and the keeper dragged him off me. Then the keeper picked him up and sat with him on his lap like a big chubby baby and suddenly he was docile as anything. Strange. Anyway, on to why he is world famous. A few months back, after Cyclone Yasi, the sanctuary had to be closed to visitors. Then the keepers noticed that Tonka had lost 20% of his body weight. They were very worried and spent a lot of money trying to find out what was wrong with him. They were told he was depressed from lack of human contact. He was prescribed lots of cuddles. So they got the sanctuary open again and he is doing much better. So by patting him and talking to him, we were doing our bit to help. Lovely little guy. Then one of the keepers took him for a run, knowing his love of ankles. The keeper was sensibly wearing jeans!

On Friday, Simon and I got the ferry over to Magnetic Island. We took the bus to Alma Beach, where I purchased some wallaby pellets. Then we went snorkelling. I saw a few fish but then I felt a burning pain on my left forearm. I couldn't see anything though so I swam back towards the beach where I could stand up. My arm still hurt and I could see white raised bumps in a line across it. It may have been a tiny jellyfish that stung me. I was pretty sure it wasn't anything dangerous but I wasn't so keen on the snorkelling any more. I wandered around the shallows a while until Simon pointed out a stingray burying itself in the sand. It didn't really react much as we got closer to it so I decided to leave the sea and explore the rocks instead. I saw some cool little fish in the pools but they were able to tell I was coming from really far off and they all hid. I guess they could feel vibrations through the rocks. I also saw some tiny lizards that could jump really fast between rocks.

We went to Horseshoe Bay and got some lunch and saw a beautiful big blue butterfly, which I think is called a ullyses. Then we had to jump straight on a bus to do The Forts walk because it would have been a 90 minute wait otherwise.

We walked up to a hill with some old WWII forts on. A lot of the buildings had been demolished but some were still there, mostly dark concrete rooms lined with graffiti and littered with alcohol bottles. One of them had these tiny bats roosting in, each one like a little brown fluffy mouse with black wings. We also saw some lizards and some birds and simon reckons he saw a snake... maybe! They are supposed to be hibernating, but there was a warning about death adders - you can't get a much scarier name for a snake! It meant I felt kind of jittery when there was a rustling in the undergrowth, then relief seeing it was just a bird. At the top, we could climb ladders onto the old observation buildings, where we got good views of some of the other bays.
Then we caught a bus back to the beach we were at earlier. We went to a bigger beach, Geoffrey Bay, where we watched the sun go down and explored the expanse of shallow pools left by the retreating tide.

I headed up onto the road where I saw a wallaby, but then it took a while to find more. They were nervous at first but I put some food on the road for them and they came closer and then one of them ate out of my hand. They are like kangaroos but smaller. They sort of remind me of large rats, but nicer. They communicate by hissing at each other, which can be a bit off putting. Then they will have a face off and both jump backwards. It looks kind of comedic. They can jump high and they are very agile, climbing huge rocks in a few quick jumps. I fed them the bag of food. They ate like the kangaroos, but they were less slobbery. They were also more nervy, being wild animals.

Then we just missed the bus so we had to walk back to the ferry terminal, which wasn't very far but it was a pitch black twisting road with no pavement in most places, so it wasn't the easiest walk.

Yesterday (Saturday) we had quite a relaxed day and tried to make plans for where to move on to next. Then we went out to the botanical gardens specialising in palms. I didn't know there were so many types of palm! We saw lots of turtles in a lake, a couple of kingfishers and a wallaby. We walked along the Ross River and saw lots more turtles and some fish. There are lily pads in the river with really pretty flowers on them.

Then we walked back and tried to go to a supermarket but for some weird reason the huge supermarkets shut at 5:30 pm on a Saturday, which is silly and makes no sense when they're open till 6 on Sundays and 9 pm other days. So we got takeaway from town.
Now we're en route to Cairns on a Greyhound.

We are en route to Cairns. Is hot on the bus but it's mid winter. Saw a giant welly that people can climb up the inside of and stand on top and also stopped in a small coastal town where there are houses that haven't been repaired since the cyclone and have had their roofs ripped off. Reminds me of the Wizard of Oz. There are trees fallen over everywhere. Doesn't look much better than Christchurch in some places. Other places they've done a really good job of clearing up. You can really see the intensity of the cyclone though.

We've got less than a week left of travelling now. It seems it's gone really quickly. I don't think we'll be seeing that much of Cairns, will mostly be on trips to the areas around it. We have planned an overnight trip to the outer Great Barrier Reef involving diving for Simon and possibly a dive for me. Watch this space...

Oh and we'll be arriving at Heathrow at 5:30 am next Sunday if anyone wants to join my parents to welcome us back!