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