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Magnetic Island is located 8km off the coast of Townsville and was discovered by Captain Cook in 1770, although he never set foot on the island. A lot of people have asked why it is called Magnetic Island, we were told that when Cook passed the island his compass pointed to the island instead of North, nobody can explain why this phenomenon occurred and it has never happened since.
We traveled to the island by sea link ferry and booked a 3 hour tour in a stretch 4 wheel jeep, designed to take 9 passengers but there was only me on Steph on the tour. Our guide was a German lady who had lived on the island for 2 years, having lived in Adelaide before that.
The island is 52 square km (60% of which is national park) and has 11km of roads, with approximately 2000 permanent residents. There are 23 bays each containing a beach, 6 are only accessible by boat. Right I'm starting to sound a bit like a your guide now, but it really was stunning. Our tour took in a few of the bays accessible by road, Picnic bay, horseshoe bay and nelly bay to name a few. We saw rock wallabies, searched for koalas, and managed to see 1 sat high up in a tree and went on a butterfly walk (Bev I have a video especially for you) we had a break for morning tea in picnic bay and drove pretty much every kilometre of the tarmacced roads. Our guide was so knowledgeable and passionate about the island, she even knew which plants we could eat should we be stranded in the bush, not bad for a lady who left Germany only a few years ago and knew very little, if any English.
After the tour we stayed in horseshoe bay and had lunch, we walked on the beach and sat in the sun for a couple of hours before catching our ferry home. We had toyed with the idea of leaving Townsville on Sunday and not going to Magnetic Island, but I'm so glad we changed our minds, it was probably the nicest place we have visited so far and up there on the list of places we'd like to live, the fact that it's the dry tropics, with small amount of rain and temperatures in the high 20's all year round makes it even more appealing.
Well spotted Captain Cook.
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Bev Now then ...I've only just seen your comment re the video! Ha ha.. is it gonna freak me out...? do you agree those aussies butterflys are super sized !!! Like flying magpies !!! Swooooping and diving all o'er !! ..Enjoy ! X