Yesterday was a day for washing, catching up, and reading on the deck, until 5pm when Ian declared “I’m going for a walk up Mt Rooper”.  This is the hill we can see, with the Telstra towers on it.  He took a steep but sealed road, with a short dirt section at the end.  From […]

The main reason for coming to Airlie Beach was to visit the world famous Whitsunday Island and Whitehaven Beach.  If you’ve ever googled “world’s best beaches”, you’ve seen the amazing photos of swirling azure water, and gleaming white sand. Unfortunately, being ranked as one of the World’s Best Beaches, means Whitehaven is also one of […]

We are staying in the middle of Conway National Park, so it seemed appropriate to do one of its numerous walks – especially as the trailhead is literally just down the road.  Our map did not give the contour interval, so the half a dozen contour lines that we needed to climb up and down […]

A smooth boat ride from MI to Townsville; a smooth drive from Townsville to Airlie (there seemed to be a lot less roadwork); with a quick stop at the Burdekin Bridge, and a quick and very steep side trip to the top of Mt Inkerman; a short shop at Cannonvale, and finally we found ourselves […]

Final day on Maggie (we’ve gone local), and we decided to go our separate ways.  But only in order to reach Arcadia, which is a couple of bays away.  There are two ways to walk there – the “High Road” and the “Low Road”.  One is longer, steeper and rougher than the other. I took […]

For the princely sum of $3.75 pp, you can ride the Sunbus all day, hopping on and off where you please.  Seeing as it only takes 15 minutes to get to the north side of the island, you don’t spend a lot of time actually on the bus.  It runs from Nelly Bay up to […]

Today we took the ferry to Magnetic Island. We checked in to our resort apartment, overlooking the marina. We went for a walk. I wasn’t going to bore you with photos of … … but I couldn’t resist.

Continuing our theme of local military history, we headed for the Army Museum of North Queensland – only open Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, so it was now or never. Admission was free and the museum is entirely run by volunteers.  It was surprisingly good – well laid out displays with clear explanations, lots of personal […]

It was time to do some serious sightseeing.  The first place everyone visits in Townsville is Castle Hill – mainly because it completely dominates the city, kind of like a mini Gibraltar (minus the cable car).  You can walk, run or cycle up and down the steep winding road to the top (3 km), take […]

It took us right up until we hit the first traffic jam in Airlie Beach, to wish we were back in our car free slice of heaven. Ah well … we duly collected our rental car, a nice little MG which seems to drive smoothly enough, and fits into the smallest parking spaces.  The drive […]