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Happiness Is The Road
It was service day for the van today. I have now done 20,000 kilometres since I picked it up in Perth. I had booked the van into the K-Mart Tyre & Auto in Townsville. We dropped our lovely little camper off just before nine. The guy at K-Mart was really nice but explained that he'd had three mechanics phone in sick and that we'd probably not get our van back until around four. We said no worries to this and he said he'd try and get it done earlier if possible. We went off for a mooch around the shopping mall over the road. We had a good mooch and got a coffee. After two hours we'd exhausted the shopping centre and still had potentially five hours to kill. It was too far to walk to the centre of Townsville and the beach so we found a seat and got our ipod and headphones out. Just as I was about to press play my phone beeped. We had a text from K-Mart and our van was ready. It was only half eleven, wahey! We went straight back to K-Mart and thanked them very much for getting us done so quickly. This really was good service. We decided to now drive to The Strand which is the foreshore at Townsville. We parked up right on the sea front and went for a walk. It is a really nice seafront area and it looks very tropical. We are properly in the tropics now. You cannot swim in the sea up here due to the deadly jelly fish that inhabit the waters. There were signs along the beach warning of the dangers. There are six jelly fish that can harm you but the deadliest is the Box Jellyfish. It is a box shaped bell with four corners. The bell can be up to 25cm in diameter. It has up to 15 ribbon like tentacles arising from the four corners and these may extend up to three metres in length. If you get stung by one of these you will feel a severe burning skin pain. The sting marks are whip like and you will stop breathing and rapidly lose consciousness. You are advised to call 000 immediately and treat the wound with vinegar. There were 'safe' swimming areas along the beach where they had put stinger nets out but the sign stated that these weren't 100% effective and you swam at your own risk. There was absolutely no way I was going in the sea here and I don't really understand why anyone does given the risks. If you don't get very urgent help a box jellyfish can kill you. We got some lunch and then we went to the far end of The Strand where they have a swimming area called the Rock Pool. This is a salt water swimming area that is separated from the ocean and is safe to swim in. I went for a swim here and the water was lovely and warm. It was really refreshing. After this we drove back to the caravan site and on the way we stopped off at a branch of Dan Murphy's to get some beer and wine. This is the cheapest place we have found. We got a few bottles of decent wine for less than $5 each and I got a carton of XXXX Bitter stubbies. The XXXX beer here is far better than the tasteless muck that they brew in the UK and try and pass off as XXXX. We chilled back at the caravan park with a lovely bottle of chilled C******nay and watched the sun set over the airport in the distance.
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