Mission (Beach) aborted

Due to the delay in sorting out the van and the additional time spent in Cairns we were a couple of days behind schedule - we therefore took the decision to miss out a stop and head straight to Townsville the next major stop on our itinerary.

A couple of stops along the way and Kates first spate of driving, we made Townsville in pretty good time (around 6 hours). The roads here are long straight and pretty dull. All along the sides of the roads for vast amounts of miles are fields and fields and fields of sugar cane...literally as far as the eye can see. And if it's not sugar cane then it's banana plantations...get's pretty monotonus! Luckily to keep things interesting the Aussies driving skills keep us on our toes! Let's just say they're not the most patient drivers and will overtake regardless of bends in the road, hills, space in front to pull into or even cars coming in the opposite direction...it's a joy to watch and be a part of.

First port of call in Townsville was finding somewhere to call home for the next few nights. Our first choice site was unfortunately full so we detoured to the next site nearest to the main town. This too didn't have any available powered sites, but the guy kindly let us pull up in front of one of the cabins and plug in there instead...a real big bruiser of a guy, but couldn't have been nicer or more helpful!

That night (Saturday 21st) we drove into Townsville itself for a look around and a spot of dinner. Townsville used to be the largest city in Northern Queensland (back in the 1800's or so) and is currently undergoing a bit of a boom. Lots of construction, new apartments at the marina etc. It's a great place though, a really nice esplande along the beach front with the usual BBQs every 20 minutes or so, countless joggers and the most amazing kids water park i've seen. Was all I could do to stop myself running in and shooting the water canons and riding down the slide they had!

We got our bearings around town ready for coming in the following day for the weekly market in the main shopping precinct and then headed off for some dinner at Jamaica Joes right on the waterfront.

The market was a bit of a let down apart from a slightly amusing site of some old lady doing interpritive dancing to the chap who was playing country music on the bandstand. We couldn't quite work out whether they were together or not, I'm thinking not!!

They have a reef centre at Townsville, 'the largest living reef aquariam' in the world so we decided to pop in there for the afternoon. As we arrived they told us the coral talk was just begining and did we want to join it, sounds a bit boring you might say but actually was really interesting, there were only four of us there so was nice an intimate and the lady showing us round was so enthusiastic she made it all very enjoyable and I feel I learnt quite alot actually!

They had a dangerous preditors talk after that where you sit right infront of the tank and watch all the creatures they are talking about, again very interesting. Then immediatly after they fed them as we were lucky enough to have gone on one of the feeding days.

The following day we decided that we would take the ferry across to Magnetic Island and spend two nights over there.....