It took us 6 long hours from Port Douglas to finally reach Townsville. As the drive was so long we only managed to include a lunch stop at Mission Beach. All other beautiful places will have to wait! Townsville is a capital of Queensland so we expected it to be much livelier than what we found!We struggled to find a place for dinner, everything seemed to be shut and the streets were eerily deserted. We wandered for a while through this ghost town till we settled for a bar which seemed to be one of the only places showing any signs of human presence!

Next day we caught the ferry to Magnetic Island. Magnetic Island is populated and is one of the Townsville suburbs - it is fairly big, it is impossible to negotiate it by foot - you can hire a car, moke or use a public bus. We were in one of those lazy moods - so we just caught the bus and went to the biggest and busiest bay - Horseshoe bay. We immediately headed for a cafe - where we spent a blissful hour having a lunch and cold drink while reading some newspapers and watching the sea. Later on we caught the bus to the more remote Picnic Bay - where we finally decided to do some more energetic stuff, so we climbed our way up via very rocky pass to the Hawkings Lookout - where we could enjoy some spectacular views of Townsville and the island itself.