10/20-10/25 Townsville

Last week was a week off for studying before finals started, so instead of studying I traveled to Townsville. Townsville is on the Northeast coast of Australia. I chose to go there because one of the things I really wanted to do before going home was to visit the Great Barrier Reef, which is accessible from Townsville.

I took public transit around noon on Saturday, October 20, to get to the airport for my 4 pm flight. The flight took 3 hours but I got there at 6 pm because Townsville doesn't use daylight savings. I walked from the airport to the hostel I was going to stay at, which took about 80 minutes. I didn't really want to walk that far, but I also didn't want to pay for a shuttle ride. The hostel, Civic Guest House, was just a few blocks from the main part of the city, which was convenient. I stayed there for the first 3 nights. It was a relatively nice place, and they had free WiFi. The only problem was that there were small ants crawling on the walls in the bathroom, but after I told one of the employees she came and cleaned up the walls right away. That evening I went out and walked around the city for a while, but there wasn't much to see.

On Sunday morning I went out for a job in the morning so I could see the city. On the way I stopped at the city market. A few blocks on the main street were blocked off and there were vendors there. There also was a city information booth which had a lot of brochures and stuff. After going back to the hostel for while, I went back to the information booth and made a booking to go to the Great Barrier Reef on Tuesday, and to stay at Magnetic Island on Tuesday and Wednesday night. Magnetic Island is an island 5 miles off of the coast of Townsville, it takes about 30 minutes to get there by boat. Then I went to a grocery store and bought enough food for a few days, and went back to the hostel to eat. In the afternoon, I decided to hike to the top of Castle Hill, which is a large hill in the center of the city. It was very hot, the walking path was quite steep (mostly steps), and I felt a bit sick, so it wasn't very enjoyable. It took about 40 minutes to get to the parking lot at the top. There were a bunch of lookouts and a few different peaks, and it took me about an hour to get to all of them and take some pictures. I took a different path on the way down. It was also quite steep and mostly rock steps, and it was dangerous. After I was 2/3 of the way down, the path kind of disappeared. So I followed one of the lesser traveled paths. Unfortunately, it led me past a sign that said not to enter the area, and a ways further down the path disappeared. At this point I was quite worried because I couldn't find a path down, but I didn't want to walk back up. So I continued down into a rock quarry, and eventually it met up with another path that I took and ended up in one of the neighborhoods. I walked back to the hostel and spent the evening there.

My room at Civic Guest House

Castle Hill as seen from the bottom

Lots of steps

Magnetic Island in the distance

On Monday morning I went to Reef HQ, which is the largest living coral reef aquarium. They had a tank with large animals called the predator tank because most of the sharks and other large animals were there. Another, larger tank had tons of fish and a lot of coral. There also were smaller tanks and informational displays. There were various presentations every hour or so. One of these was a visit to their turtle hospital, where they treat injured and sick turtles. I ended up spending over four hours there. It took less than two hours to see everything there, but I stuck around for the presentations.

Luminescent fish 

The big Tawny Nurse Shark spent all of its time laying on the bottom.

A turtle in the turtle hospital

The top of the tank

On Tuesday I got up at 5:20 am and got to the marina at 6:30 am to meet the boat going to the Great Barrier Reef. The trip included lunch and snorkeling gear, I also signed up for an introductory dive. We also stopped at Magnetic Island to pick up some more people. In total there were 4 crew members and about 15 people. It took about 3 hours to get to the reef, and it was only the outer edge of the reef. Unfortunately, I got seasick halfway there, I felt terrible. When we got there, one of the crew members told me all the information I had missed for going on the introductory dive. Then I went snorkeling (I was feeling better by then), but I only had 10 minutes because I had to get back to the boat for the dive. 6 others had signed up for an introductory dive. Four of them went right away, and I went in the second group with the last two. They both chickened out, one before even going underwater, the other after only going a few feet under, so it was just me and the instructor. The dive went pretty well. I was very nervous at first. You have to continually adjust the pressure in your ears, which was difficult to get used to. It was also difficult to get used to only breathing through my mouth, which becomes problematic when I exhaled through my nose which loosened the pressure in the mask. After getting used to the equipment we went up close to the Reef. It went pretty well. At one point I couldn't pop my right ear, and even once I did it felt a bit funny. I also had some problems with floating or sinking too much. For a while my feet were hitting the floor of the ocean, which you aren't supposed to do. Then when I tried to fix it I was floating too much, but overall it was alright. Unfortunately, I spent most of my time underwater very worried and just trying to keep following the instructor, so I didn't get to enjoy the scenery as much as I wanted to. We were underwater for about 15-30 minutes, it was hard to tell how much time had passed. We went about 20 yards underwater, which was how deep the water was, but this was also hard to tell. The goggles distorted the vision and made things look closer than they were, which was difficult to get used. After surfacing, we swam back to the boat, which was challenging to do with an air tank on my back. Everyone else was just finishing lunch and going back into the water. I became seasick again and barely ate anything for lunch. I wanted to go back out snorkeling, but I felt seasick again. I probably would have felt better if I had gone back in the water, but I needed to stay near the bathroom, so I did not get to go back into the water again, which was disappointing. After an hour or so, we left and went back. I felt better for part of the boat ride, but most of it was very unpleasant. I got off the boat at Magnetic Island, and I was very grateful to be on land. The hostel I had a reservation for on Magnetic Island was on the other side of the island, which is only 5 miles wide. I took a bus to the hostel. The hostel was very different because it was a bunch of individual cabins that held around 6 people. When I got there I walked to Horseshoe Bay, which was only a 5-10 minute walk. I bought some food there, and then walked back to the hostel. There were six beds in my room, but there was only one other person there the first night. Regrettably I didn't take any pictures at all on this day. I had my camera packed up with my backpack, and I wasn't in the mood to take pictures when I was sick.

On Wednesday, I walked to some of the nearby bays, which I had heard were beautiful. I followed a map to get there, but the map didn't say that it was lots of steps between the bays. After getting to two near bays, which took an hour, I decided to take the long way back to avoid climbing the rock paths again. I stopped at some more bays and outlooks on the way back, but I was getting very tired and running low on water. There was a path that led to forts left over from WWII that I had hoped to see, but by the time I got there I was too exhausted, so I just went back to the hostel. The entire trip took over 3 hours.

My "bungalow" 

I came across some weird looking birds. I think they were the same ones seen later, red-tailed black cockatoos.

There were two horses in an enclosure next to the road.

The hostel had an animal sanctuary, and they give 3 tours daily, so I went on the one in the afternoon. There was a large group (about 25) and they let everyone hold/pet the animals, so it went quite slowly. They had a small saltwater alligator, red-tailed black cockatoo, Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, wombat, various lizards and skinks, a turtle, koalas, snakes, freshwater crocodiles, and a tarantula. There was an additional fee to hold a koala (imposed by the government) which I paid so I got my picture taken with Noah the koala. The koala was the most dangerous animal to hold of the lot because they can be vicious if you annoy them. After the tour ended, there was a bird feeding. Every day at 4:30 pm they feed the wild Lorikeets. At 4:25 they were all waiting in the tree. The ranger brought out a pan of what appeared to be wholegrain bread soaked in water. You could grab some of the bread and hold it in your hand, and the birds would land on your arm and eat it, which I did. It was a lot of fun, birds kept landing on my arm, shoulder, and hat. I tried to take pictures of myself with the birds, but the pictures didn't turn out great.

A sleeping koala

The ranger with the saltwater crocodile. It was 8 years old, it's snout had a band around it to keep it from eating people.

The red-tailed black cockatoo

You can feed the cockatoo a seed.

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

Wombat sleeping in a log

Pebbles, the 5 month old koala, too young to handle.

Me and Noah

This is how I was handed the koala.

Me with a snake, the lighting was terrible

Freshwater crocodile

Tarantula

The same saltwater crocodile as before, but in its enclosure.

The lorikeets gathering in the trees

Me with some bread in my hand. The birds scratched up my arm a bit.

Some other bird standing around nearby.

One of the birds landed on my camera, as you can see in the top left corner.

On Thursday morning I got up, packed, checked out of the hostel, took a bus back to the ferry, and took the ferry back to Townsville. I walked around the Strand (what they call the beach/coast area) for a while, stopping at their Anzac memorial.

On the ferry

Leaving Nelly Bay, where the ferry docks on Magnetic Island

If you put your hand on it, it talks about the history and memorials.

There were a bunch of these trees along the Strand.

I walked back to the main part of the city. I bought a bunch of post cards and spent a few hours at the public library filling them out, and then sent them. Then, around 2:30 pm, I walked back to the airport for my 6:30 flight. In Melbourne, I took public transport back to Monash.

Since then I have spent most of my time studying for my finals. My first final is astrophysics this Friday (11/2), but I'm not too worried about it. I will be spending the rest of my time studying, taking finals, and hopefully seeing the last things in Melbourne and Victoria on my list. I fly home in 17 days, which I am looking forward to.