It was only a short stint to Townsville in theory but once again it seemed to take forever. We had to drive through an area called the Burdekin which was very agricultural but very red neck. We read a disturbing article about a man from the Burdekin who had been arrested for fondling backpackers in their sleep so we drove through with the doors locked. The highlight of the day turned out to be our brief stop at the Big Mango – our first encounter with large fibreglass fruit. Townsville is a sprawling town with little to recommend it – we rejected two campsites before settling for another Big4 by the Bruce Highway. This took up quite a lot of the day whilst we went in out and around the town, got very hungry and had to stop at Hungry Jacks (the Australian burger king) before we killed each other. Once we had parked the van Oliver managed to go jogging down a dirt track and see 5 more kangaroos and we then spent some time on the internet planning our next stop in a national park campsite about 60k up the highway. When we awoke in the morning we all saw a couple of small roos eating grass near our van. It made it worthwhile but the main reason for the stop in Townsville was to visit Magnetic Island just 4 miles off the coast.
So we took the Sealink ferry across and hired a mini moke from a grumpy Liverpudlian lady for the day. There is only really one road to drive it on the island but Oliver made the most of driving up and down to and from horseshoe bay. It was terrifying and exciting all at the same time – especially the drum brakes. Magnetic Island is beautiful with lovely beaches and it is the best place to see koalas in the wild and we were successful! We did the walk up to the gun placements used to defend against the Japanese during WW2 and on the way walked through trees spotting three koalas. We saw one of them really close to us. We have some photos.
Tiger made a pretty turtle out of seashells on horseshoe bay and we spent our last half an hour looking for a photo opportunity at nobby headland but to no avail. Oliver was most disappointed. We got the 4.30 ferry back to the mainland to strat our trek on to the national park campsite we had chosen.