The First Full Day

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After a full night’s sleep (5pm to 6:30am) my wonderful host and chauffeur (aka graduate student and errand slave of Mark McCormick) showed me around the lab. Most of the fish here are completely alien to me, but I imagine I’ll get the names down after working with them for a few months. After working for a few hours, Matthew and I set off to collect some necessities (new eyeglasses and a track phone) before taking a tour of downtown.

The Sentinel

Castle Hill guards Townsville silently for eternity. In every snapshot the sentinel stands, unperturbed and never moving. For millions of years it’s stood, and for centuries more it will remain unchanged.

The Strand

Exactly as the name suggests, this artificial beach stretches across the Pacific on the downtown side of Townsville. It seems most everyone here enjoys my favorite activity of taking long walks, so there is a lengthy path that follows the contour of the artificial beaches downtown. On the inland side of the path there are numerous outdoor exercise machines (steps, crunches, etc) as wells as fields, picnic tables, and playgrounds. Further inland still lay the shops, pubs, and general downtown.

After being cooped up in a plane, and then generally too exhausted to move, I was keen to stretch my legs. Matthew and I enjoyed a Gelato (which is popular around here) and meandered along the strand. We also walked out to the edge of the peer to gaze at the Magnetic Islands (made of sandstone and not remotely magnetic) and the shark buoys (terrible baited hooks that sit outside the bay catching and killing hundreds of sharks). The buoys work, plenty of sharks are caught and drown to death, but it’s completely useless since they don’t use nets. Apparently during the peak swimming season (Nov - Feb) there are swarms of “stingers” (jellyfish) so you can’t swim anyway. Although no one is swimming now (70F is quite chilly to the locals) those terrible buoys are still there.

"Scaling" Castle Hill

After meandering around the Strand, Matthew and I had some time to kill before going out to a pub to celebrate a friends birthday. We "scaled" Castle Hill in his car, and I snapped some photos from above. The sunset photo is from down in the valley, but the nighttime photos of Townsville's suburbs is from the top of Castle Hill. Hopefully I'll get the opportunity to walk up there soon.

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