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Published: February 14th 2010
Magnetic Island
A sweeping view of Magnetic Island from near the top at the old WWII lookouts. I have had enough rain and humidity to last me a lifetime so I was excited to start traveling south. My first stop after leaving Cairns was Magnetic Island. I heard from many travelers that the island was really awesome and a must-do; I was warned though that it sucked in the rain. But then again anything sucks in the rain. (Sorry to complain about the rain so much but I think I've had 4 days in the past three weeks that it didn't rain and even when it's not raining it's very cloudy; So it's been a major part, and bummer, of my trip. But despite the rain I've still had a good time.)
I had to spend about 6 hours on a bus from Cairns down to Townsville and then I had to catch a ferry over to the Island. So it took me most of the day to get to the Island. I decided to stay at the Bungalow Bay Hostel, where there is an on-site Koala sanctuary. Plus they had camping, which was about half the price of a dorm bed. Plus camper had the same access to showers and the kitchen that everyone else
Secluded Radical Bay
One of the 23 secluded bays on the Magnetic Island. did. And I heard that the dorms were damp and hot anyway because they did not have A/C. Let me just get it out of the way now and say that it rained all 4 nights I was on the island. Now, most of the time it didn't start raining until I went to bed and then it was done by morning, which is the way that I'd rather have it. And everything that was inside my tent, mostly just me and some electronics, stayed completely dry. The rest of my stuff did fine under the vestibule until the last night when it rained like crazy all night and eventually water started running along the ground into the vestibule and even under my tent. All of my stuff was soaked. I had to pack up my wet stuff to leave, which meant that when I unpacked it it was guaranteed to smell horrible.
The first day I was on the Island it was threatening rain most of the morning but I decided I couldn't let the rain stop me so I started off on a hike. The hike wound around part of the island and through some old
WWII ruins. Most of the ruins were unidentifiable and just slabs of concrete. However, at the top there were some old gun ruins, artillery storage houses and lookouts. The walk is also a common place to see koalas in the wild so I was keeping my eyes out for them but I never saw any. Maybe I was just unlucky or I was just really bad at spotting them. I was so hot on my walk and I walked on so many nice secluded beaches that I wished like crazy that I could take a dip in the ocean. But of course I couldn't because of the jellyfish. I could not wait to get back to the hostel to get in the pool!
On my second day I visited the Koala sanctuary and had a guided wildlife walk. It was so much fun! We learned about crocodiles, snakes, turtles, birds, lizards, and koalas. And we got to hold most of them! The tour only took a couple of hours so I spent the rest of the day lounging by the pool. It was really hard to make myself relax and do nothing for the entire day but once
Kiss Kiss!
Ok so I didn't really give the bird a kiss; I fed him a sunflower seed from my mouth! I really accepted that I really didn't have anything I HAD to do I was more able to relax.
By day 3 I needed slight change in scenery so I headed to the nearby beach for a few hours. Eventually I was too hot and I did not trust the stinger net they have set up in the ocean so I headed back to the hostel for the pool. Plus I had some planning and administrative things to do. So over all I relaxed on Magnetic Island, pretty much the perfect place to do such a thing.
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