Townsville was the last stop-off Liza and I experienced together in Australia. Townsville looks like a small city with several tall buildings claiming to be banks or corporate entities. It is the nearest place to Magnetic Island which lies just off the coast.

Magnetic Island itself was quite pleasant, as we visited a couple of picturesque but above all near-deserted beaches. Liza and I were surprised but delighted to find the beach deserted and we went for a swim in the warm sea. When in the sea a vehicle emerged out of the trees onto the beach and our isolation was was abruptly ended as a group of people jumped out and wandered on the sand. They did not swim like us though despite the scorching sun beating down on them.

After a long swim Liza and I returned to the beach to dry off. (The following week, after Liza had returned home I was informed by a fellow backpacker who was amazed at mention of us bathing that swimming was dangerous off the island beaches because of crocs. I thought he must be a little bit deluded and sensational with his tales of croc infested seas (he had that sort of countenance). However I was later told by the keepers at a croc farm I visited in Innisfail that there was a saltwater creek just around the coast from where we had taken our plunge was inhabited with 'salties' that grown up to 20 feet long and that it was not uncommon to see them swimming in the sea near the beaches.

However I was assured by the keepers that there hadn't been an attack for over a year and no sightings from that beach for about a month!! I thought to myself that there probably had not been an attack for over a year because noone went swimming there, and that the first a swimmer would probably know of a croc's presence in the water was when the jaws clamped over the unfortunate's head. - This is the first Liza will have heard about our swim in croc-infested waters)

After drying off I told Liza we were going on a walk around the forts of the island. She did not thank me for the 16 km hilly trek that followed in the exhausting heat of the middle of the day. The three hour slog offered nothing more than rocky outcrops with a couple of long-redundant gun placements. Several information signs noted that previously there had at least also been a couple of ammunition stores and restrooms for the unfortunate hundred or so Oz troops stationed there in 1942.

Another sign noted wistfully that that the enemy Japanese planes and boats had never actually attacked Magnetic Island or Townsville (to the eternal misfortune of anyone who has since found themselves here), but that a gun had been fired once when the keen Ox troops, probably half-dead from boredom, saw a strange ship on the horizon. They were swiftly rebuked over the radio by the US navy ship they had just fired upon (and inevitably missed - remember nothing interesting happens here) as having mistaken the vessel for a Japanese one. However it is my opinion that the Australians probably knew the ship was American but fired anyway as it was the only excitement from the war they were likely to get in this remote and rocky outpost, and they hoped that the US ship would retaliate and return fire, blowing Magnetic Island and Townsville to smithereens.

We returned to the mainland hoping in vain that Townsville would be more stimulating. We came across a shop with a clearly ironic sign above the door reading 'Convenience Store'. It was closed - it was a Monday afternoon. The overhead sign was complemented by a sign in the window stating it was closed on Sundays and Mondays and opened at 3pm on other days. Yet such lofty aspirations proved beyond it as I found when I returned the following day at 3.15pm to purchase some staple foods only to find it still closed and shuttered. We found such opening hours surprising but it turned out to be the norm.

The only places seemingly open before 2pm on any day were a public house and a McDonalds, presumably so people could drink themselves into oblivion so as to forget where they lived or attempt to kill themselves with cholesterol. I spent 3 nights in Townsville which was 3 nights too many. The only all too brief respite being a 3 hour film at a local cinema which allowed a much-needed escape into a fantasy world of superheroes.

Townsville does have two museums which showed that it had in the past been a useful and interesting place, but alas, this had been at least 150 years earlier. Ever since
it had been overlooked as a place to be capital of Queensland (Brisbane rightfully deemed more worthy of the accolade) it had suffered a severe decline.
Liza likened it to Detroit - a still, motionless place with windows boarded up with very little sign of life. An anti-litter sign on a bin said 'Don't waste Townsville'. The message was too late - it is already a dump.

It perhaps would have passed as a modest, unadventurous town if it didn't try so hard to convince tourists it was a great place to be, and possess an extraordinary belief in itself as an enticing destination. The pretty yet unspectacular promenade would be much more enjoyable if the signs around it had not read 'Our beautiful promenade - A haven of natuaral life'. As if to prove my point, as Liza and I were attempting in vain to find a place to eat after 9.15pm, a colourful bird in a tree gave a strangled sqwark and then plummeted to its death on the pavement before us. It was lucky - too good
and beautiful for this place it had no doubt flung itself from the arboreal limbs for a quick and merciful death. Liza and I endured a more tortuous, prolonged
agony - Liza staying for 2 nights before escaping home, and me an unbearable three.

After Liza left I was determined to escape this hell-hole as soon as possible. My bus for Cairns was booked for the following day so I tried to while away the hours by booking a trip in a travel agency. Anything to help me get away from this hell-hole. I wanted to go to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and the cheapest way of doing this was by
Greyhound bus but I couldn't go directly to Cairns. The only available trip would be a mammoth 36 hours on the bus, and worse still, I would have to spend a night in Townnsville on the way there.

The prospect of spending 15 hours in Townville again was too much to bear. So I booked a return flight to Alice Springs from Cairns. More expensive but
mercifully quick and relatively exhilarating compared to a night in Townsville.

I returned to the hostel to find backpackers watching Wolf Creek, a film about backpackers in Australia being hunted down, then tortured and killed in the most
despicable and inhuman way by a psychopath. It is, so the dvd sleeve claims, a true story. At least the backpackers didn't go to Townsville. They got off easy. Their gruesome death was
quick and less painful than experiencing a living death here in Townsville.

Pity the poor fellow I met at my hostel who has reached the credit limit on his credit card and has to work in Townsville for several weeks to earn enough money to escape.
He told me he had just found 2 weeks work in a Townsville hospital. I don't know which I found more surprising - that he thought he could bear two weeks in Townsville or that there were residents of the town who wanted to get better and continue their miserable existence in Townsville.