Blogs from Townsville, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 5

From Charters Towers, we went further north to Mt Surprise and stayed at the Bedrock campground. The town has a pub, a few houses and not much else. We met 2 ex-kiwis who have retired here! We were buying some eggs from them. ($4.50 a dozen, and for 50c more a bag of mandarins). The surprise is that there is no mountain. Actually, a few kilometers down the road there is an amazing series of lava tubes. About 200,000 years ago, a volcano spewed out lava and it ran down the local river beds. The surface cooled and crusted, but the interior ran on for about 160km, leaving a hollow tube. Some of these have collapsed, but the remaining tunnels are huge and fascinating. Lots of ancient volcanic activity in the area. After a few days, ... read more

We stayed quite a while in Townsville, because we wanted to find a job there and to visit the Magnetic Island, of which we had heard lots of good things. It was also the first experience of busking for Loup, with OK results, although not as good as expected (maybe it'd be better without singing...) So in Townsville, again some beaching, some sunset watching, some nice BBQs and even a casino night! In his first casino experience, Erwan managed to make +18$ playing roulette! (an Loup only +10$..., both of us starting with 10, so we a least double :) ) We spent 4 nights in Magnetic Island (Maggie, as the locals call it) during which we passed our open water diving certificate, so that we could finally go and tickle the sharks or race the ... read more

It’s been a while since the last entry, but forgive me, as ‘the crew’ and myself have been busy doing really cool holiday stuff. Taking off from the last blog, Glen Innes was to be our next stop. They call it ‘Celtic Country’ and sits 1200meters above sea level. The night temp. went down to minus 8c and daytime around 12c. Colin went for his morning walk and took photos with ice covering the ground and trees. I was tucked away in bed, as was Curtis and Mali also, so we missed that experience. Lucky for the photos. We all tried fossicking in the icy cold water and hopeful but unlucky to find anything of value other than a good time getting our hands dirty. From there we went to Kyoglie, NSW and spent a day ... read more

On arrive jeudi matin à Townsville, après avoir passé la nuit à Home Hills dans la meilleure "rest area" de tout le pays: cuisine et douche, tout ça gratuit c'est incroyable!! D'ailleurs pas mal de jeunes Français qui font du "fruit picking" dans les plantations des environs y ont élu domicile, bien que ce soit la durée soit limitée à 48h. Arrivé là-bas on se dirige vers le Museum of Tropical Queensland, très intéressant notamment la partie consacrée au Pandora, navire de l'armée britannique chargé de ramener en Angleterre les révoltés du Bounty et qui coula sur la Grande Barrière de Corail. On y passe 2h30, en sortant on s'installe au "Strand" la longue promenade du bord de mer pour le déjeuner. Le temps est splendide il fait environ 25° c'est bien agréable. Partout des panneaux ... read more

We spent Christmas eve travelling between Hervey Bay and Townsville. This was a 1000 kilometre drive that took us 14 hours! We left early and in the heat of the middle of the day, got very hot in the car. We kept the windows open in an attempt to cool ourselves and left the air con off to try to save fuel but also because it came our like a mouse blowing through a straw! After that drive we said we would never subject ourselves to that kind of drive again! We got to Townsville around 9pm at night. The hostel reception was closed, but as I had called ahead en-route, they left a key in the safe box outside. We had a small double room and found our melted butter and cheese to be no ... read more