Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
So we arrived in Townsville after a crazily long journey through the Atherton Tablelands. We ended up arriving there at about 8pm which is way later than we expected to (didn't really plan that drive very well) and unfortunately had to spend an hour just driving around in the dark looking for somewhere to park the van for the night. It seems that the Australians don't mind too much if you park just anywhere, but if you are parked somewhere 'illegal', all the police will do if put a ticket on your van asking you not to park there the following night and usually we will have left the town by then anyway so it doesn't matter. Oh dear... we have become gypsies!
Anyway, we arrived in Townsville and it was really nice to be back in a city that looked relatively 'normal'! We'd found Cairns eerily quiet and spaced out, and all the other towns we encountered along the way were similar. Townsville is by the beach and a river, and is just the most scenic, relaxed place ever. The main area is 'The Strand' which is a promenade that stretches across the front of the beach and is full of running tracks, outdoor gyms, playgrounds and showers (which we have been using for free, fantastic!). There's a real 'town' spirit here and of an evening there are so many of the locals just walking/running along The Strand and making the most of the beautiful views and weather. The main view from The Strand is 'Magnetic Island' which we visited (will write a blog on that too!) and just looks so stunning especially when the sun goes down. The rest of the town is pretty easy to navigate (although we just could not find a petrol station ANYWHERE when we first got there!) and there's loads of lovely bars and restaurants along the beach front.
We found Townsville to be fairly quiet in the week too but then discovered like other places in Australia, these people do things very early in the evening! They all wake up at the crack of dawn and therefore eat dinner/do evening activities at around 5pm. So no wonder all the bars and restaurants looked empty when we walked in to them at the 'normal' time of 8pm for dinner!! There are loads of families here too, so you just get a really nice vibe about the place. We decided to spend a couple of days here as we liked it so much, and also arranged for a diving weekend at the Great Barrier reef (which we have just come back from - will write a blog soon to tell you all about it) so ended up spending about 4 days here which is far more than we should have as we only have the campervan for a month!
Whilst in Townsville we joined the locals on The Strand and went jogging along it in the evening and did exercises (it's great travelling with a personal trainer - Matt can turn anything in to an exercise!) to burn some of our 'travelling fat'. We visited an aquarium (think I've spelt that right) called 'Reef HQ' which has an artificial reef inside it very similar to the Barrier Reef and has many of the fish species in it that we saw when we were diving this weekend. There was loads of information there about how the reef forms and the life underwater and also about how the reef is changing due to environmental issues which was quite worrying. There was a big shark tank which we enjoyed looking at, and we watched a dive show when the guy was diving in the tank (with his scuba gear) and talking to us through an underwater microphone - very cool. He had this huge turtle in the tank with him which kept swimming up to him, it was like a puppy that wanted attention! Apparently it's really rare for turtles to be that tame, it was rolling over so he could stroke its belly and showing off in front of the glass so we could all see it! Amazing! There were also some pretty scary sharks in the tank with him, but he was saying they are fed so well there that humans just aren't of interest to them. Confident.
We've been really enjoying life on the campervan and the sunshine in Townsville. We are now about to move on to the next place and will be sad to leave. This is definately somewhere we would come back to in the future, but we may yet find somewhere better along the coast! Will update you on Magnetic Island and our dive on the Great Barrier Reef next time. Speak to you soon! Lots of love, Holly & Matt xxxxxxxxxxx
- comments