Blogs from Townsville, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 13

Servus. Nach Mission Beach haben wir beschlossen uns an einem abgelegenen Wasserfall zu erfrischen. Was auf der Landkarte wie eine haarnadelbreite Strecke aussieht ist in wirklichkeit eine 45min fahrt und davon waren 5km Dirtroad. Ich erinnere nochmal an die Jucy Klausel: "Nur 500m Dirtroad fahren" Zum Fluss: Auch wenn es etwas frisch war, kam das Kind in Artur zum vorschein. Er ist gekletter, gesprungen, gerutscht und hat sich dreckig gemacht und große Fische gab es auch zu sehen. Nach dem Geplantsche ging es weiter auf die suche nach einem geeignetem Schlafplatz. Diesmal habe ich einen Free-Campingplatz vor Townsville gefunden. Neben uns waren auch schon einige andere da und man hat sich gleich sicherer gefühlt. Haben wir schon erzählt das Lena sehr gut in Canasta ist und ich kaum eine Chance hab gegen sie zu gewinnen. Aber ... read more

God, I hate this stupid laptop. I hate Microsoft. I loathe and detest everything to do with wifi. I also hate Virgin Blue for losing my luggage. I abhor the World Cup this time - a curse onto the rotten, spoiled playboys of Brasil, Portugal, Spain, Chile, and England. Now you may be getting the impression that I'm a bit jazzed up at the moment, and you wouldn't be wrong - after all, my thyroid meds are in the lost luggage, my eyes are bulging out like Marty Feldman's, I'm all frazzled by the massive flights, the missing meds, too much weak coffee, bad, boring football, and the general stress of finishing school on Tuesday and flying to the other side of the World the next day. I'm not actually complaining, despite what you might be ... read more

Hello! Well, we're finally enjoying some proper Aussie sun again here in northern Queensland. Townsville, despite soundng like the most unimaginative place ever (I can see the meeting now: "what should we call it?"; "how about 'Town'"; "don't be silly, we need more than that"; "ok, how about 'Towns... ville'?"; "ok, but we'll come back to look at that later and come up with something better") is actually quite nice, although it shares it's love of roundabouts and speed humps with Noosa. Fraser Island 4x4 driving was amazing, we drove along the beach and up the to Lake MacKenzie which was beautiful although surprisingly a little chilly. The beachside camping was great as well, although the dingo fear was definitely worth bearing in mind - you had to go to the (self-dug) toilets in pairs, and ... read more

Sorry this took a long time to put together due to one too many single malt whiskeys, all will be revealed. On leaving Airlie Beach we decide to free camp at Home Hill - a much recommended site, we had heard so much about it. The camp site, or to be more precise, camp street, runs parallel with the Bruce Highway on one side and the railway line on the other, how peaceful! Not really anything to do after visiting the Tourist Information Centre and having a 5 minute stroll down the street, but we decided to go out for dinner at the pub across the road. After eating slightly overdone fish with chips in the hotel courtyard we retired to the bar for a swift roady. The lady chef came and sat with us and ... read more

Hello everyone from “sunny” Townsville (well, we’re on the bus out of Townsville at the moment, but let’s not worry about pedantry for a while eh); apparently the most underrated city in Australia and the city with the highest number of days of sunshine a year (320 days a year, allegedly). In our experience it was wet, really dead, and quiet boring - apart from the awesome day we had yesterday at a wildlife sanctuary, but more on that later. Townsville was pretty strange. First off it is being redeveloped so that is good as it needs it, but it wasn’t just the town that was a bit odd; it was the people too. There were loads of groups of people hanging around on the streets - not yobs, but just random middle aged people and ... read more