East Coast Stop Nine - Townsville and Magnetic Island

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The drive to Townsville the following morning took around 3 hours and was once again a nice easy drive up the Bruce Highway - only stopping a couple of times for road works, thankfully! We arrived into Townsville at around 12pm, but unfortunately the reception at Civic Guest House Backpackers had just closed and wouldn’t be opening again until 2pm, so we decided to go and have a walk around the town for a few hours. We found a free car park (not many of these in Townsville unfortunately!) within a rock cutting of the huge rock that overlooks Townsville, then walked up into the town centre.

We found an information centre where we picked up a map and a few leaflets from some of the local attractions, then found a café to get some lunch. We then had a walk around the shops for a little while before making our way to the Townsville tax office to pick up some tax return forms. We had tried to do our tax returns online but apparently because we had never done them before we had to do them via post, which was a little annoying but thankfully we already had all of the information electronically, we just had to copy it all onto these forms. We picked up the tax return packs and took them with us back to the hostel, where we would now be able to check in as it was after 2pm.

We had a bit of a rest in the room and out of the heat of the sun (it was very hot today, we can definitely tell that we’re in the tropics now!) before walking to the Woolworths store around the corner to pick up some food for the next few days. We then spent the night surfing the internet using the free Wi-Fi, and also completing our tax returns ready to post the next day.

The following morning, we had planned a day out to the Billabong Wildlife Sanctuary. After a visit to the post office on the way to post our tax returns, we had a drive of around half an hour to reach the sanctuary. Once there, we paid our admissions, bought a couple of bags of animal feed and fed a few ducks before noticing that they were just finishing the first koala photo session of the day. We had already decided that we wanted to do this, along with a wombat photo, so we paid for our photos -in order to get a cuddle, you have to buy the photo, but we didn’t mind as it was for a good cause, and actually cheaper than most other places that we had seen.

Emma was first up and the koala was placed in her arms, where she got to cuddle it for a little while whilst posing for photos. The guy was messing around with the camera and the printer for a while so she got to hold it for longer than we thought, and he was of course absolutely adorable! Craig was next and the same process ensued. We both took pictures of each other as we took our turns to get a few extra photos along with the souvenir photo that we would receive later on.

Once the koalas had gone back to their enclosures, we sat down to watch a reptile show, where we were shown a couple of snakes, a few lizards and a baby crocodile. We were then given the opportunity to hold each of them after the show, all for free apart from the big Burmese Python which, like for the koala and wombat, you had to pay for the photo. Whilst the majority of people had their turn at handling the reptiles, we went to talk to and feed a cockatoo that was squawking on a branch behind us. We then took a few pictures of each other holding the reptiles, then, armed with our animal feed, went to explore the rest of the park.

There were plenty of kangaroos hopping around, along with loads of ducks, so we spent a while feeding them, along with a couple of cockatoos that were sitting around. We then had a bite to eat at the café before heading to the other side of the sanctuary, where the dingo interaction was about to begin. The dingoes (along with the majority of the animals there other than the ones that had been rescued as adults) had been hand-raised, and so were really friendly, and one of the keepers brought one of them out whilst telling us all about each of them, and everyone got to pet and fuss her – she was definitely loving the attention!

Once the dingo talk was over, crocodile feeding was about to start, so we made our way over to the pools to watch. They fed three large crocodiles over the next few minutes, and ensured that the crocodiles were getting their exercise by getting them to do a few jumps out of the water before giving them their chunks of meat. We left the crowd of people and sat on a step for a little while by a group of kangaroos, one of which was just a little joey, and we were soon surrounded! We were literally ambushed by them and got a few funny pictures of them sticking their noses into the camera lens!

We then had a walk down to the large pool in the centre of the park, which was full of turtles. Craig tried to feed one of them a leaf but it just snapped at him and almost took his fingers off so he didn’t try again, ha ha! We then sat down to watch the bird show, where a few different birds swooped around over our heads whilst the keepers told us a bit about them, then we got to hold/pat a few of them after the show.

We had a walk around the koala enclosures, where they were all either fast asleep or munching on eucalyptus leaves, and we noticed that one of them had a baby, which was so cute! It was then time for our wombat photo! We had to wait a little while as they did another set of koala pictures, but they brought out the wombat and he sat on the keepers lap as some people took their own photos just sitting next to him and patting him. Finally it was our turn, and we took it in turns to have the wombat sit on our lap so that we could hold him and give him a big hug and a belly rub! He was just like a big teddy bear, although we were quite glad that we didn’t go first as he peed for about 5 minutes straight as soon as he sat on the first guy’s lap! He took it well and couldn’t believe it every time that we confirmed that the wombat was still peeing! Thankfully with the way that he was sitting it didn’t really go on him and just ended up being a massive puddle by his feet, but he had clearly been planning that all day! We enjoyed our cuddles and got some good pictures, then picked up our photos that were taken, along with the ones with the koala, before making our way through the exit back to the car.

We thought that the sanctuary was a really good day out – the animals are really well cared for and all seemed really happy, and it was nice to have so much interaction with the animals.

The following day was another hot one, and we had a bit of a lazy morning before washing some clothes so that they would dry out in the sun. Later in the afternoon we took a drive up to Castle Hill – the top of the rock overlooking Townsville and also Magnetic Island, just off the coast there. The views were pretty amazing, and we could really feel the strength of the sun being that little bit higher up than usual.

On Sunday, we had planned a trip over to Magnetic Island. We hadn’t booked anything, but knew that we could just hop on a ferry over there and get a bus pass to get around. We drove down to the marina to the ‘Fantasea’ ferry terminal, where we picked up a couple of return tickets before boarding our ferry at 10:45am. The trip over only took about half an hour, and we were soon at the Nelly Bay marina. Once off the ferry, we found the nearest bus stop but found that the bus wasn’t due for another 40 minutes, so we decided that we would just walk around for a while. We headed up a nearby road and eventually emerged out onto the esplanade, where we walked along the beach for a little while. The tide was really far out, so it looked a little strange with all of the muddy sand and rocks exposed, and there were a few people picking what we assumed would be shellfish from the rock pools around there.

By that point, we knew that the bus would be arriving near us soon, so we waited at the nearest stop for it to turn up after about five minutes. We paid $7 each for day passes, which was pretty good as we were expecting them to be $11 each but apparently they had a special offer on them today! We then continued along the coast on the bus before getting off at Picnic Bay. We found a bench in the shade and sat for a while watching more people picking shellfish from the rocks and a few others that were fishing off the nearby pier.

We then walked along the front and found a café to get some lunch, before making our way back to the bus stop, where we caught the bus to Horseshoe Bay, on the other side of the island. This gave us the chance to see more of the middle of the island, which mainly consists of a large natural park, with a few homes, shops and hotels dotted around, surrounded by lush tropical rainforest and palm trees. We reached Horseshoe Bay and made our way over to the beach, where we took a few pictures before sitting on the sand under a large Mangrove Tree. We spent most of the afternoon here, having a bit of a snooze and watching some people riding around on jet skis and getting dragged around behind speedboats on rubber rings. It was a lovely relaxing afternoon and we eventually made our way back to the bus just before 4pm to head back to Nelly Bay, where we caught the 5.15pm ferry back to Townsville. The sun was just starting to set as we went, and the clouds had formed a really unusual pattern which looked really cool! Once we got back to the hostel, we packed up our stuff ready for our move to Mission Beach the next morning.

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