Townsville was a great little town to crash in for a few days. The first night we stayed at an awful hostel. I had booked it online for a pretty great deal for 8 nights once I realized that we were not going to be freedom camping while in hot humid Queensland. We quickly found out why it was a good deal and cancelled the rest of our reservation. Then we found this awesome hostel called the Orchid Guest House which felt more like a B&B. Honestly, how could anything with the name Orchid not be delightful? Anyway, we ended up staying there for 3 nights. The owner was the sweetest most helpful lady.
Townsville has two large swimming lagoons and a 2 kilometer beach front stretch called The Strand where you can walk, rest, bbq, play, sunbathe or whatever. One of the pools was used by the Olympic teams to practice back in the 50s and 60s.
One day we took the ferry to Magnetic Island. Dave has been wanting to rent a motorcycle since we started travelling and he got his chance while on the island. We rode all over the island and had the best time. First, we went to Horseshoe Bay where we swam and ate gelato. We swam in the netted in area and found a floating seed of some sort. We made a game of throwing it back and forth and then attempted to play paddle ball using our hands as the paddles. Ha! It actually worked, not near as well as paddles, but hey, it was fun.
Then we hiked the Forts trail where we saw four koala bears!! This was absolutely the highlight for me. First we saw three that were high up on trees. Then we came upon a teeny tiny baby that was just a couple of feet above us. I was enamoured. Supposedly Magnetic Island is known as the Koala capital of Australia. I’ll post the rest of the photos on FB so you can see all their cuteness!
Then we rode out to the West Point which was a bit of a crazy ride, but Dave got to get some of his extreme adventuring out of his system so it was worth it; and fun too, if a bit on the scary side. Last we rode to Geoffrey Bay where we saw several rock wallabies with babies in their pouches! Holy cow, cuteness overload people. I was completely wiped out after our day there. We both were. We got back to our place, ate leftovers and crashed by 9pm!