An attractive force

14 - 17 May

Travelled South to Townsville, capital of North Queensland (also known as NQ which looks like "No"from afar, making it a rather negative abbreviation!). This journey of 250 kms should not have taken much over 2 hours but the main road, the Bruce Highway, is being upgraded and we were delayed by constant roadworks. Since this is pretty much the only road they can't close it so instead have a series of people operating traffic controls. The construction industry here seems to be encouraging equality. We saw quite a few women on the road working teams, admittedly most wielding the stop/go sign! 

Anyway 4 hours later we rolled into Townsville, just in time to grab a bite and get on the ferry to Magnetic Island. An easy 45 minute ferry ride. We were amused to see a ship in the Townsville Port that originated from Limmasol, South Cyprus. Guess the problems there means it's had to look for work in new climes. 

Large reddy brown ship comes from Cyprus

Magnetic Island is a lovely little island only about 8 kms away from the mainland. Great selection of beaches and not over developed. 

Weather was a bit variable but when not exploring the island we were able to luxuriate in our large three bed apartment which we'd rented at a very good price. This is one advantage of visiting in the shoulder season that we hadn't appreciated. The apartment even had it's own plunge pool but was also just steps away from an absolutely huge pool. 
 

Small pool outside our front door

View over the marina from our balcony

 

Spacious kitchen come day room

Master bedroom with bath!

The whole complex was very quiet so no problem with being able to do some serious swimming. Just as well since although the beaches were glorious, the water warm and calm there are numerous nasty stingers in the sea here so once again the pool was the best option. 

 Would certainly recommend a visit to Magnetic Island. It's a pleasant seaside resort and easy to navigate though presumably in high season it would get pretty crowded. 

Wildlife is a constant part of life in Aus. Here we came face to face with our first possum who used our balcony furniture as a sort of launch pad into the foliage. Very fury creature and quite endearing though somewhat noisy! On our drive back to Mission beach we also had a close encounter with a group of low flying  kites who seemed more interested in road kill then avoiding our car. Fortunately they did fly off before we collided.