Magnetic Island

Our awesome weekend in Townsville was capped off by a day spent on Magnetic Island, often referred to as "Maggie" by locals. Our friends, Joe and Marley, joined us on the day, which made the experience that much more enjoyable!

We took the Sealink ferry from Townsville, and the ride was smooth, taking about 30 minutes. Upon arrival, we tried to hire a "moke" or a topless car, however, those types of cars were unavailable, so we ended up with a tiny regular car for the day. 

Leaving Townsville. View of Castle Hill from the ferry... we would drive to the top later in the evening.

Arriving on "Maggie Isle"

A topless car. Doesn't it look like a Barbie car?!

Our first stop was Picnic Bay, where the scenery was spectacular!

After visiting Picnic Bay, we drove back towards the ferry terminal and along the east coast of the island. There are several bays along the coast that have gorgeous little beaches with no one on them! Eventually we ended up near "The Forts" track, which Marley suggested we walk. It is a really nice walk with great views, particularly as you near the top of the Forts. Along the way there are remnants of structures that were used in World War II. Apparently it is common to see koalas along this track as well, but we did not see any on that day.

I think this is Cape Cleveland

Overlooking one of those bays along the coast

By the time we reached the car park we had worked up an appetite, so we headed to Horseshoe Bay in search of lunch. We ended up at Marlin Bar, a pub with a nice view of the beach. Horseshoe Bay is one of the more popular areas on the island, but we were visiting on a Monday so it was quiet. We enjoyed lunch, a few drinks, and some ice cream before hanging out on the beach for a bit. 

We had some time to kill before catching the ferry, so Marley suggested we stop at Bungalow Bay, where he knew there was going to be a bird feeding taking place. Sure enough, a guide came out with "bird food" and the birds started going crazy! It was actually a bit overwhelming and freaky to have birds landing on our heads.

These birds are definitely not afraid of people.

Hair or hat, the birds like to land on people's heads!

After our bird feeding adventure we headed to the ferry terminal to return the car and head back to Townsville. Once arriving back on the mainland, we headed up Castle Hill, where we watched the sunset and got a glimpse of Magnetic Island from the hill. It was a fitting end to a fantastic day. 

Love these guys! Magnetic Island in the background.

Marley headed back home to Ayr and Joe arranged for Erik and I have dinner from Zambrero, a restaurant chain that is owned by his friend. The concept is similar to Chipotle and while the food was very tasty, it was not really "Mexican". If someone could open up a Chipotle franchise over here, I think that person would be very successful! After dinner and a quick shower at Joe's place we were off to the airport, arriving about 45 minutes before our flight was scheduled to depart. Gotta love domestic travel in Australia, where security screening is a breeze, you do not need a boarding pass to get to the gate, you board the plane from the tarmac, and you can bring your full water bottle with you on the plane. We had not traveled domestically in over a year, so we had almost forgotten how good that was! About three hours later we were back in Melbourne to endure a few more weeks of winter, already missing the North Queensland sunshine. Thanks to Joe and Marley for being such amazing hosts during our weekend getaway to Townsville!

Townsville

For the last few years I have been mentioning to Erik that we should head to Townsville to visit a few of my "Contiki" friends. I know I've talked about them on the blog a few times before, but in case you are a new reader, I did a Contiki tour of Europe in 2004 and fortunately I have managed to keep in touch with a few friends from that trip. Two of those guys came to America for our wedding in 2007. One of those guys who made it to our wedding lives in Townsville, a small town in North Queensland. I have been threatening to visit him and another Contiki friend basically since we moved Down Under, and a few months ago there was an airfare sale that I could not pass up, so we decided to spend our first footy-free weekend (the season just ended) in Townsville.

May 2004. Amsterdam.
Marley, center wearing the black shirt, and Joe, in the striped shirt, are the guys we were visiting!

We flew up on Friday night after work and went straight to "The Strand", or the waterfront part of Townsville. We enjoyed dinner on the water at Longboard Bar and Grill before heading to "City Lane", a new laneway in the CBD with outdoor bars and restaurants. We also walked along the main street in Townsville where many young people were out for a big night!

A store in the Townsville CBD. To be "off your tree" means you are crazy.

In the morning we hit the road to Ayr, the town where my Contiki friends grew up and where one currently lives. That friend, Marley, owns a boat and enjoys fishing and crabbing. He and Joe, our other friend, had arranged for us to spend the day on the water catching mud crabs. Erik and I are accustomed to eating Maryland blue crabs, but we had never tasted mud crab and we had never actually been out on a boat trying to catch crabs. The weather could not have been better for our day on the water. Not only did Marley catch mud crabs for us, but he used a net to catch fresh prawns (shrimp) and set up a boiling pot on the beach so that we could eat the crabs and shrimp right there on the water. It was an amazing day!

Joe waiting to pick up the next crab pot

Erik getting in on the action

Marley baiting up a crab pot

Can't remember which cape this is! Note the white dots...those are our crab pots!

Measuring the mud crab to see if it is a keeper

Erik got pretty good at holding these guys!

This one looks big enough to keep. They have to be 15cm across and you can only keep males.

A female sand crab. These are protected, so she went back in the water.

This pelican came to visit while Marley was fishing for prawns.

Docked on the beach

Our view for the feed

After 20 minutes in a boiling pot, our crabs were ready to eat!

The best part, the "nippers"

Out of the water just as the sun was setting

That night we went to watch the local rugby game, as our friend Joe is an assistant coach for the team, the Burdekin Cane Toads. Yes, the mascot is a cane toad!

In the morning we headed down the road about 15 minutes to Alva Beach, where we would check in at Yongala Dive to spend the day scuba diving! Last January when I went diving on the Great Barrier Reef with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, our guide mentioned that her favorite dive site she had ever been to was the SS Yongala shipwreck. The ship sunk in 1911 on the way from Melbourne to Cairns, but the wreck was not discovered until 1958. It has become one of the most popular shipwreck dive sites in the world, and it is known for an abundance of fish and sharks. We did not get a glimpse of any sharks on the day, but we saw TONS of fish, small and large, along with turtles, sea snakes, an eel, and two different types of rays. There are some really BIG fish at the site, grouper and maori wrasse, and also huge schools of barracuda. We saw typical fish similar to those we had seen at other dive sites, but the fish were much larger! We used our GoPro, but we don't have the special case for underwater shooting so unfortunately the footage is not great. The visions are still fresh in my memory, however, and for me the dive quickly became my favorite site of the 10 or so dives I have completed. I highly recommend diving the site with Yongala Dive. Normally you need advanced diver certification to dive below 18 meters, but at this site you can pay a little extra money for "deep dive training" (which only includes a skill or two once you enter the water on the first of two dives), which allows you to dive to 30 meters. Here is a YouTube video that helps give you an idea of what we saw down there!

One we hit the surface, we saw humpback whales playing near the boat. According to our skipper, it was a mom and a calf, probably 2-3 days old. We also saw another whale on the way back to shore, as it is migratory and calving season for the whales. Those sightings just topped off an awesome day of diving!

The tides are crazy, so we ended up having to make a few trips back to the boat to carry things to shore.

That night we set out to find a cane fire. Sugar cane farming is the livelihood of many people in North Queensland, and that night you could see piles of smoke coming from various cane farms. Joe got us pretty close to a fire so that we could see, hear, and smell the cane burning. Apparently there are lots of snakes and wild pigs amongst the cane fields, so the fire gets rid of those pests. After the burn off, the next step is harvesting, and we drove by the plant in Ayr where cane is harvested after it is burned.

One of several cane fires we saw that evening

After another amazing meal from the sea (Marley fed us delicious grilled fish that he had caught earlier in the week), we headed back to Townsville for the night to rest up for our Monday adventure, Magnetic Island.

Four Wheeling on Fraser Island

Erik's parents had about 10 days to spend with us as part of their big holiday (exploring Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji), and we thought it would be fun to take a trip together somewhere during that time. We ended up choosing Fraser Island, home of Great Sandy National Park. I found cheap flights to Sunshine Coast Airport, which is about a 2 hour drive from Rainbow Beach, where we would take a ferry over to Fraser Island. We were lucky to find an awesome car rental company for our 4WD rental (most people do the Fraser Island trip flying into Hervey Bay and renting from there where there are tons of 4WD hire companies), and Richard, the owner, met us at the airport with our vehicle, fully stocked with camping equipment for our 3 night adventure. After a quick stop to stock up on food and drinks for the next few days, we headed north until we reached Inskip Point, where we drove onto the Manta Ray Barge for a quick 10 minute journey over to Fraser Island.

Erik lowering the tire pressure to prep for driving on sand.

Almost there!

Not much traffic on these roads...

...but there are still speed limits, in case you were wondering!

The tricky thing about driving on Fraser Island is that you have to be aware of the tides. You can only drive on the beach within 2 hours of low tide (before or after), or else you may get stuck on the inland roads which are really slow (though quite adventurous because you never know what type of road conditions await you!). When we were there, some of the inland roads were closed due to flooding, so we had to be particularly mindful of the tides.

We camped the first night at Central Station, so we took inland roads to get there. On the way, we stopped by Lake McKenzie, which is known for its resemblance of an ocean beach and not a lake. However, when we arrived, we found it flooded due to recent heavy rains. It was still a beautiful sight, but with the flooding and the sun setting, it did not look that much different than a typical lake, minus the super soft white sandy bottom. Here is one of Erik's pictures of Lake McKenzie from his Fraser Island backpacker trip in 2002, taken with an old school film camera, of course! :)

Lake or ocean? If it weren't for the trees it would be hard to tell!

On the second day, we went to check out the Hammerstone Sandblow and Lake Wabby. Jill ran sprints up the sandblow. Erik, Dan, and I sat in the lake to avoid being eaten by massive horsefly-like creatures, which we soon learned could be captured and fed to fish in the lake!

Hammerstone Sandblow is to the left and Lake Wabby is just behind Erik.

That's a lot of sand. Apparently the sandblow might eventually engulf the lake!

At some point during that day, it started to rain, and it never really stopped until we got off of Fraser Island. We were still able to enjoy ourselves, but camping is always much more fun when it is dry! Due to the rain, we made a stop in one of the "towns" on Fraser, appropriately named Happy Valley. There, we found comfort in a couple of adult beverages (which were surprisingly cheap given the fact that we were isolated on an island and surely the price could have been double what we pay on the mainland), watching the rain as we sat outdoors under a covered deck. Once we thought that the timing of the tides was suitable for beach driving, we kept on exploring.

The dingo. Visitors are encouraged not to feed them so that they learn survival skills, but it's hard not to want to feed them when they are this skinny!

A better way to get to/from Fraser Island?!

Eli Creek, nature's lazy (and cold!) river.

Doing well with the sand driving!

The Maheno Wreck

Our next night was spent camping at Waddy Point, towards the north end of the island, just a couple hundred meters away from the ocean.

There were tons of HUGE frogs at our campsite!

We had hopes of getting a great view of the island from Indian Head in the morning, but it was raining once again. That did not stop most of the group from swimming in the Champagne Pools, where water comes crashing in from the ocean, creating a natural pool. Interestingly, that is the only place for "safe" ocean swimming on Fraser, due to the fact that apparently there are lots of sharks on the east coast of the island and saltwater crocodiles (those are the big kind!) on the west coast.

That day was a big day of driving, as we had to make it all the way back down to the barge landing by 5pm. Due to the timing of the tides, there was no way we could spend our last night on Fraser Island and make our 11am flight safely.

Our only snake sighting of the trip, fortunately!

Toes in the sand at Lake Birrabeen. Rivals the sand at Whitehaven Beach...and this is a lake!

Once back at the south end of the island, we boarded the barge to leave Fraser Island. We spent the night at a campsite just a few minutes from the barge landing, another good waterfront location. In the morning we headed back to the Sunshine Coast, leaving our trusty 4WD behind and heading back to the dry city of Melbourne. Fraser Island is truly a unique experience, and it was awesome to be able to share our adventures there with Jill and Dan!