Townsville Too

I godda cold. Rats. Last day on Magnetic Island a bit of a blur. I did manage to have a swim at Rocky Bat which was lovely. Then before you know it, you’re back on the boat and back in Townsville.

We went to the Maritime Museum, but nearly didn’t make it past the front door. The man in charge was obnoxious, gave us a hard time because we asked for the seniors discount. He then went on to whinge about all us seniors coming there and getting a $1 (yes all this for one dollar) off the entry price, even opened the ledger and started counting us! All we could do not to mention that if ‘we’ all stopped coming he’d be out of a job, because 90% of the entries were us old farts. He was the genuine PITA. I later made the mistake of asking when they were going to get the Townsville moved down the river to give their collection some real attraction. Boy oh boy, he went of like a Roman candle citing the $26000 a year for insurance and the kids would put graffiti all over it and of yes the insurance and how all the visitors were old and would trip over the hatchways and to quote our PM Pretender “does he ever shut up?”

The collection was pretty bland really, lots of words but a bit short on your actual museum type of artefacts. At one stage I heard the gatekeeper giving a couple a hard time about whether they had learnt anything or not as they were trying to escape. We fooled him, I hung back until another pair of victims trying to get in gained his attention, and then we made a break for it!

The next day we took a drive up to the lookout at Mt Stuart, which is directly behind Townsville. Far out, it’s a 10.5km steep windy one lane climb from the Charters Towers road up to the top. Sheer drop on both sides and you wind your way up the ridge line. Interestingly, on one side every 2m there is a sign warning the would be trespasser (how? It’s straight down) of the dangers of Laser targeting and Live Bombs. Seems they occasionally use the valley to practice playing armies with real guns and other toys. Might have something to do with the Lavarack Barracks being right here next to our van park, which is right in front of the mountain.

Took the long way home, via a tiny and pleasant town called Giru whose claim to fame is the cane mill. We thought we’d do the right thing and patronise the one café / post office and went in to order lunch. Little did we know that minutes later the mill staff would all appear for their lunch, so it wasn’t struggling at all, just looked it. Mind you, the one lady cooking and serving had to keep racing through the adjoining door to attend to Post office business.

On the way back up the coast I decided that we had to visit Cleveden on Cape Cleveland. Took quite an effort to find the turn-off, cunningly marked ‘AIMS’ (Which transpires to be Australian Institute of Marine Science which happened to be up on the cape itself). Even Tom Tom was no help, we found a place called Cungulla, not on the map and gave up on the others. Maps, I have decided, are next to useless for anything that isn’t a big town on a main road.

Back in town we were hell bent on having a swim in the Rock pool on the strand. By the time we got there the wind had picked up and it was less than pleasant. I had a go for 2 minutes, but the water was gross and cold as well, so we elected for wine and Buffalo Wings at the pier restaurant, a fitting way to watch the day turn to night and end our sojourn in Townsville.