Magnetic Island

The Taka diving trip was an intense experience. After that, we needed a break. Unfortunately, there weren't any campervans available in Cairns. So we reserved one in Brisbane in 10 days and hopped on a Greyhound.

Our first stop was Townsville. We didn't even know what was in Townsville. It just seemed like a good place to stop. Well, as it turns out, there isn't much in Townsville. We looked out the bus window as we rolled into town and saw "closed" signs in the windows of one business after another.

When we got off the bus, we decided to do a little reading and find out exactly what there was to do in this town. We found out that Magnetic Island is 20 minutes off the coast. It has beaches and laying on the beach was about all we had the energy for. Luckily, the Greyhound station is also the ferry stop so we got our tickets and hopped on the ferry.

When we got to the island, we had to find a place to stay. We called around and couldn't find any private rooms so we had to settle on a dorm room. We found a place called Magnum's (which is a chain here). They had a dorm room that no one else was in so it was a sort of private room. Unfortunately, we realized quickly after we moved in, it had no ventilation (which made it sort of mildewy). We learned to look a little closer before we get the rooms and we missed our campervan a little more.

The next morning we went down the street for a little brekky (that's Aussie for breakfast) and to explore the beaches. The first beach we went to Jigar went into the water about ankle deep. He was joking around, pointing to any shadow or rock in the water and saying, "Oh no! What's that? A saltwater croc? A sting ray?". But one of them really was a sting ray and swam about 2 feet away him. We left that beach.
Across the street from our hostel, there was a beach called Alma Bay, which is supposed to be one of the prettiest on the island. It didn't disappoint us. It was a nice place to lay out and swim without the sting rays. It was school holidays so there were a number of people there, but it wasn't too crowded.

That afternoon we moved to a hostel on the other side of the island. They hadn't had any private rooms the night before, but they had one for us now. It was called Bungalow Bay and the rooms were all little log cabin type things. It was very cute and a huge improvement over the first place. It was in an area called Horseshoe Bay. We walked to the beach and just sat there and enjoyed the view for a bit.

The next day, we lounged around again until the late afternoon. There is a hike on Magnetic Island called The Forts Walk. It is a walk through a eucilyptus forest to a lookout where the Australian army had a base during the second world war. The biggest thing motivating us to do the Forts Walk was that koalas live in the eucilyptus trees that line the trail. They are most active in the early morning or late afternoon which is why we waited for late afternoon to start our walk.

We started out along the path. We looked in the trees. It was hard because we didn't which ones were eucilyptus so we had to look in all the trees. And koalas don't really do anything so you are just looking for a furry grey bum up in the tree. We looked and looked, but we didn't see anything. We thought that maybe the koalas lived in a different part of the walk. Eventually we passed an Aussie family. They asked us if we had seen any koalas. We told them no so they showed us where one was and told us we had just walked past another. The one they pointed out to us was a mama koala and her joey. It was so cute! They were sleeping and they didn't pay any attention to us at all. We walked right up to them and took pictures. We saw a couple more koalas along the way. One was really hard to miss because he was walking around, but they are shy so he scampered away when he saw us coming.

About halfway up the path, we heard what sounded like a wild boar in the woods. We didn't know they had wild boar on this hike! It turns out it was a koala. That is the sound that they make. I thought a giant wild pig was going to come running out of the woods after us!

It was a really pretty walk that culminated in a lookout with a beautiful view, but the highlight was definitely seeing the cute and cuddly koalas along the way. They are so sleepy looking. They look like huggable little teddy bears. We kind of wanted to kidnap one, but we felt a pet koala might hamper us in our travels.

We left Magnetic Island the next morning. We had to catch a morning bus to Airlie Beach so we could check out the Whitsundays. We had a lovely little holiday there and got the rest and recuperation we needed.

More photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=33990&l=8d51c&id=813269869