Day 29 Magnetic Island

Today we took the ferry across to Magnetic Island, or Magnetical Island as Captain Cook called it.  He did so because something on the Island interfered with his compasses.  It was probably the iron content in the granitic rock that makes up the Island.

It was a really great day.  Both busy and, the same time, quite laid back.  We had to get up early to find our way to the ferry terminal for the 7.45 am ferry. It took only 30 minutes to reach Nellie Bay, Magnetic Island's ferry port  And then we had an hilarious time getting used to the little old Daihatsu Mira (168,000 k's on the clock) that we hired to travel the sealed roads of Maggie (as the locals call it).  We discovered that we had forgotten what it was to drive a manual transmission car, without reversing camera, remote control door locks or electrically operated side mirrors, not to mention windows.  We could only drive on sealed roads, all 20 kms of them.  Fortunately, these roads connected the main beaches and so it did not take long to travel between them.  This left lots of time to sit back and enjoy the scenery, visit an informative little museum at Picnic Bay and savour some truly delicious coffee during the morning and pizza at lunch time.

Magnetic Island today is dedicated purely to tourism.  There a couple of 4 or 5 star hotels and heaps of holiday apartments and backpacker accommodation.  Most of the little beach resorts that we visited, (Nellie Bay, Picnic Bay, Arcadia and Horseshoe Bay) have attractive shopping strips lined with plenty of cafes, booking offices for holiday activities and shopping boutiques.  There were a large number of tourists about and this added to the atmosphere of these little villages.

Of course, there is more to do here than drink coffee and shop.  The beaches are superb.  Very picturesque and offering safe swimming during the dry season.  But don't swim here between November and May, it is deadly jellyfish stinger season.  For the more energetic, there are a number of walks, from quite easy to long and challenging.  If you want to hire a four wheel drive, there are some remote beaches to visit.

The weather added greatly to our enjoyable day.  It was relatively cool this morning but warmed up during the course of the day.  It was overcast for most of the day and this made it easy to do a fair bit of walking.

Now, it is time for your research task.  What is the name of the tree shown in the following pictures;

The following clue may help.  The name has nothing to do with British Petroleum.

Now for some other photos.

Townsville from the sea

It looks bigger when Bev stands beside it

Do you think it will fit into the carport at home?

Picnic Bay Jetty

Horseshoe Bay

Horseshoe Bay

Horseshoe Bay shopping strip

At last, some Grey Nomads!

Arthur's Bay

Alma Bay

Alma Bay

Bush Stone-Curlew

Rock wallabies in the breakwater at Nellie Beach

Magnetic Island Marina

Magnetic Island Ferry