Fresh water wash for Mingo

We get up on the morning of Sunday 16^th September and head down to The Strand to walk along the waters front.  There are a lot of other people out and a number on the water including small catamarans and laser boats sailing close to shore and the general atmosphere of people is relaxed.  We have a nice morning walk then head  back past the marina and into Flinders street and come across the Sunday markets.  They are fairly small but seem quite good with a variety of nick knacks.  We have a good look around but don’t buy anything.

Time to head back to the marina and we have a walk down a few arms to nosey about on what boats are around.  There are a few for sale but none under $75,000.

Chris washing Mingo

Andrew cleaning Mingo

Now its bath time for Mingo so we spend the rest of the day pulling all the goggles and snorkels, chairs, fishing rods, ropes, and anything else that has been in sea salt water and put it outside of Mingo to give it a good wash in fresh water.  Then we get the broom out and give Mingo a good scrub and hose down.  There is a lot of salt build up, having not been washed for 12 weeks.  Everything you touch you get this layer of salt on your hands and fingers and can see on the back canopy the layer of white salt. 

Chris giving Mingo a good scrub

After Mingo is washed down we put the GPS etc. away safely and the jerry cans go up into the fly bridge.  A productive day but nothing special really.

Bilge pump working again

We head over to Bias Boating on Monday morning as when we were cleaning Mingo yesterday the bilge kept getting stuck on.  So we have to replace it.  Not an expensive exercise and a good thing it’s happening now and not a few weeks ago.  Andrew fits the new bilge, good as new again and we flush the motor with fresh water then head out in the tinny to have a look around the waterways of Townsville.  We head out of the harbor but its very choppy so to rough to take the tinny out, so instead we motor around the marina then head back to Mingo and pack up ready to leave for Brisbane tomorrow.

Into Townsville we go

Townsville with Castle Hill behind.

Water line where the wind stops or starts.

After turning in around the tip of the Cape, we are now only 22 kilometres from Townsville and cant believe that we are really here.  We are excited; anguish, happy, sad and over all have mixed emotions about seeing Castle Hill in front of usIs this all now really coming to an end?????

Magnetic Island

We motor past Magnetic Island on the east of us and are really surprised it is so close to Townsville.  We both thought it was further out but at only 8km from the marina we think we will be spending quite a bit of time here over the next year.  A few other islands in a decently close proximity are Palm Island, Orpheus Island, Rattlesnake and Herald Island.  So we still have a number of places we can venture Mingo into over the coming year.

Navman position into Cape Cleveland

 Townsville is Australia’s largest tropical city with the city being on the north bank of Ross Creek with southern suburbs between Ross Creek and Ross River.    There is a large rock called Castle Hill that is directly in the middle of Townsville and this seems to be the landmark to follow to find your way around. Castle Hill is 285 meters high granite plug that dominates the landscape. Townsville has many old heritage buildings and is what we believe Brisbane must have been like some 30 odd years ago.

GPS position around Cape Cleveland

Due to Magnetic being so close and us not having enough fuel to venture the whole way around the island today we decide to pull into Breakwater Marina and they once again are so helpful here.  We book Mingo in for a 3-month stay at this stage and motor around to our new pen.  We notice that this marina has a lot more motor boats than sail boats, as all the other marinas seem to be dominated by sail boats.

Sunrise at Breakwater Marina

We are now comfortably tied up in a new pen and happy to be able to have a shower, although still feeling a bit odd at this now being it.  We can’t believe we have spent so many weeks enjoying this and now it’s at an end. 

Our first thoughts of Townsville are very positive and we are excited to be walking around where we will be living for the coming year. 

We walk out of the marina and towards the north of the beach along The Strand, we are really impressed.  We can see very clearly over to Magnetic Island on the East.  As we walk along the boardwalk with coconut trees that are lining the beach there are BBQ facilities, coloured fountains, children’s swimming area, restaurants and a general feeling of being a really relaxed place.  The weather is hot and its not even summer yet but the breeze along the waterfront beautiful.

Townsville water front "The Strand"

We walk the whole distance of the strand and at the end come across a rock pool that leads into the ocean but is barricaded by rocks.  This is a public pool that is a safe haven for people to swim in away from the stingers.  Townsville is plagued by a number of species of stingers mainly between the months of November and April.  Some of these are deadly including the irukandji. This rock pool is not 100% safe but it is better than swimming in the direct ocean with them.  There are warning signs all along the beachfront warning not to swim between these times.  There are also bottles of vinegar scattered along the beach.  Vinegar does not relieve the pain of a stinger sting but it does remove the tentacle so the sting is not continued.  The information is very interesting and I am sure a great help if you get stung.

We think we are going to be very happy here and really have a good feeling about Townsville.  We walk down Flinders street at 1600 hours on a Friday afternoon and are surprised that just about every shop is closed and there is no traffic.  Its rush hour and there is no traffic –what’s going on? This is great..  We are on land but we are out of the Brisbane rat race. Yippee.

We have a good nights sleep in the marina with no rocking and decide to change our flights back to Brisbane from the 24^th Sept to the 18^th.  Now we are in Townsville we don’t really need to spend over a week here and having no car we are better off heading back to Brisbane, do what we have to and then spend the extra time enjoying our road trip back up and seeing some different places by land.

Looking over to Magnetic from The Strand

We go for a walk around to where Andrew will be working, right in the centre of the city and to where Christie will be working at Kirwan Police station.  Everything seems so easy here and the road system easily followed around Castle Hill.  Everywhere seems so close and with a distance of 12km between Andrews and Christies work its pretty good, so hopefully we will get a place to live right in-between.  We spend the day looking around Townsville and seeing a few different suburbs as we go and look for a cheap second car to buy.  We go to a few car yards but don’t really find anything that we are that keen on.  So we head back to the strand and spend the next hour sitting on the waterfront looking for private sales.  We phone a few people and then arrange to go and have a look at a little Honda Accord, not bad for $2000.  It’s old and has a lot of kilometres but should do as a second car while here.  We will look further when we actually do have some transport to view a few more.

We have a nice day around Townsville and yes we believe we have made the right decision in moving here.  We like the country small town feeling……………..

Feeding the fish beside Mingo at the marina

Cape Upstart, Bowling Green and Cleveland

Bowen

Bowen

Up today to the sun shining and the waters in Gloucester passage calm. Thur 13^th Sept.  We head out for a fairly easy trip to Bowen, only 20km so not too far.  We motored in through Stone Island to see Bowen in front of us.  As soon as we got in past Dalrymple Point it became really blowy so we headed straight to the Bowen Marina to refuel.  This will be our last fuel stop now until Townsville.    We motor in through a very narrow passage of red and green beacons into an old dinge marina.  There are no actual berths here all the boats that are in the marina are tied up onto poles in the water (pile berths).  We wonder how on earth these boats manage to get themselves in here and tied up, it’s a very tight squeeze.  We can’t seem to find the fuel pumps, so give them a call.  The lady Christie spoke to was most unhelpful and just said its on the beach…. Yeah where’s the beach??? You’ll see it she says.  Oh well we motor around the whole marina twice and finally come across the pump.  The one and only pump that there is.  So we tie Mingo up with no problems, only to be told that the pump lead wont reach so we have to move to another area and tie ourselves up to a trawler boat.  

 Andrew motors in to the tightest spot we have ever had to fit Mingo, and as we are turning in we clip the anchor on the trawler next to us (no damage thank goodness), so out we go again and second attempt straight in with no problems.  We fill up with about 380 litres of fuel and can’t wait to get out of here.  Andrew had been told that Bowen was a nice old country town, but so far the impression is not good.  We were going to spend the morning here having a look around, but with the winds outside the marina blowing up and rough we couldn’t anchor and the marina would not let us stay.  I guess we will be visiting Bowen by car but I don’t think we are missing much, I shouldn’t judge until I’ve seen it.   Bowen is known to be the oldest Qld town north of Brisbane and has a lot of heritage buildings and wide streets.  Bowen is where the Baz Luhrmans movie “Australia” was filmed in 2007.  Bowen is also the tomato capital of Qld but its most important industries are cattle and coal.

Coal pontoon and ship out of Bowen

We leave Bowen and head the 80 kilometres north towards Cape Upstart.  Once again the weather is pretty good so waters fairly calm although the swell is so strong that we get Mingo onto the plain and cant keep her there.  She’s up to 43km an hour then drops in a split second back down to 12km.  Doing this it just eats through the fuel.  The trouble is the swell is so strong that as we are going through the trough we are being pulled back into it constantly slowing us down.  We manage to get her onto the plain for parts of the trip but not the whole journey, making an easy trip into a longish one.   More frustrating than anything, especially as you watch the fuel gauge dropping considerably.

 Motoring north out of Bowen about 50km and we came across a jetty that would have to have been at least 3 kilometres with a big ship at the end.  This we find out later is used to transport coal.

The Bun

We motor towards the granite Headland that is known as Cape Upstart and see in the distance a very rocky outlook to the Cape and at the tip is a 7-meter high-detached rock on the northwest tip called “The Bun”.   This is a white rock and stands out like a sore thumb.  We notice that cape is made up of very rocky terrain.  Its quite a view and makes for good scenery.

Rocky outlook of Cape Upstart

Cape Upstart with houses just off the beach

Cape Upstart is part of a small national park and on the western side it is lined with numerous sandy beaches with rocky headlands.  You see these rocks at the top of the cape and they look as though they just need a quick push and they will come tumbling down.  Hope they don’t one day, as there are a number of houses along the shoreline, which are apparently mainly owned by people from Ayre and Home Hill.    These are not permanent residents but lived in occasionally for the most part for weekend getaways and are only accessible by water, there are no roads leading to Cape Upstart.

Cape Upstart Beach

Mingo in the distance at Cape Upstart all alone

We anchor up in here for the night and go for a tinny ride to have a look around these houses and beaches.  Its very nice and oh what a great spot to have a place, although what would you do if you did live here.  As we were walking along the beach a huge Alsatian comes bounding down to us, jumping up at us and nipping us on the hands, all abit daunting, but it seemed OK.  Thank goodness the lady owner came and rescued us from him, as he would not stop jumping up at us.  We had a chat to her and asked what the houses go for; she said the latest one, which was a tin shack style home, sold for $280,000 a few years ago.  Very expensive for being in the middle of now where, but then again if you want out of the rat race a great place to live.

Our collection of shells

Green Sea Eel

We spend the afternoon walking the beach, over the rocks and have a little collection of shells.  We didn’t want to take them from the beach so left them on a rock.  Some are so perfect in shape and size and colour.  As we are motoring out in the tinny we notice a green spotty sea eel swimming past. 

During the evening, Andrew siphons the fuel from the Jerry cans into the tank we had used coming over here and decided to go for a quick dip in the water.  Its dark outside now, so Christie says please be careful, shark feeding time an all.  Andrew jumps in and no more than 2 minutes later he’s scrambling out on to the duck board.  Christie has never seem him go for such a fast swim.  What’s wrong she asks and he says something big swiped past my foot.  That was a short-lived dip tonight. Now the rods our out to see if he can catch it. An hour or so later and he manages to snag another grey nurse shark.  We are feeling like something sweet tonight, so Christie makes a Lemon Cheesecake. 

Homemade lemon Cheesecake

We are up very early this morning, 0600 hours.  Its Friday 14^th September and another lovely day.  We still have just over a week until our flight back to Brisbane, but have to be careful too in case we have a run of bad winds. Even though we are not ready to head into port again yet, we also keep in the backs of our minds that we don’t want to encounter any problems that hold us up.

Cape Bowling Green in distance

After leaving Cape Upstart we head towards Cape Bowling Green, which is approx. 64km north.  We motor along past the inland town of Ayr and Home Hill through what seems like a never-ending piece of land.  Just as we head around the corner a little it seems to appear again and there’s more. This stretch went for about 50 of the 64 km into the next Cape.   We finally get to the tip of Cape Bowling Green and around to the west into a small inlet to anchor up. 

Cape Bowling Green


We walk around and see what looks like a UFO having landed on the beach (we cant quite work out what its for).  Further down the beach we head into a mangrove area and further on land grass and shrubs with pink flowers scattered in between. We also notice a small jelly fish lying on the sand.

Pink flower

Land UFO

Jelly fish

After a look around we check out the weather and the winds are blowing up on Sunday so we decide not to anchor here for the night but to head over to Cape Cleveland and then onto Magnetic Island after we have had a look around the cape.

Chris at Cape Bowling Green with tinny and Mingo

Cape Bowling Green is the lowest cape on the coast and is another long stretch of a bay with a beach that has ocean on either side.  Once anchored we go for another long walk along the beach, phew the sand is so hot under our feet that every few steps we have to stop and Andrew sweeps sand across to stand on a cool bit.  The beach seems so vast.

Andrew on the vast beach of Cape Bowling Green

Leaving Cape Bowling Green, Mingo is a lot lighter now for the first time on our trip, Andrew manages to get her on the plain and up to 48km/ph. and we just glided over the glass like water.  It was such a smooth comfortable trip and a great way to be welcomed into the entrance of Townsville.

Calm waters out at sea, heading to Townsville

Fuel flow meter indicator

Andrew put in a fuel flow meter a couple of weeks ago and its great now being able to monitor the fuel we are using.  Motoring along at 48km we are using 88.89 litres per hour, which equates to 1.89 litres per kilometre – not bad for a V8 motor.  She is just purring along so smoothly today. 

Cape Cleveland

We head towards Cape Cleveland and can see Townsville and Magnetic Island in the distance.  Cape Cleveland is the eastern headland to Cleveland Bay and the gateway to Townsville from the south.  We work out that we don’t have quite enough fuel to spend a few days around Magnetic so head in towards Townsville instead.