Magnetic Island (June 20-22)

…or Maggy as it is also called is just 20 minutes off Townsville and is supposed to be the best location to see koalas in the wild. As a matter of course I missed them.

 Leaving Townsville for Maggy in a very nice cat

Initially I wanted to skip the island but Grant told me about a package including return fare to and from Maggy, two nights at the YHA, 30 minutes of Internet, a jug of beer and a photo of you holing a koala and so I couldn’t resist.

The YHA Collonial Village has a wildlife sanctuary on site. There you can interact with all sorts of different animals and so now I can tick the following to do’s on my checklist:

Hold a koala, hold a croc, hold a snake, hold a parrot, feed a parrot with your mouth, have an Echidna running around your feet, hold a lizard and have a lizard sit on your shoulder, hold a butterfly, get a stare down from a fresh water turtle. Definitely a must do on Maggy and once again well worth it.

 There were hundreds of butterfly in those woods

and pretty easy to catch

cute but a wee smelly fellas

Me has snake lolz

creepy lizard, didnt get its name

In the evening I went to the beach and checked out the water sports. I wanted to rent a cat or do a jet ski safari but all those things were too expensive and so ended up just soaking up the sun and the atmosphere.

The next day we (Bettina from Nuremberg which I met in Airlie and me) went to the Forts (some old military bunkers from WWII) which are situated in a national park. There was supposed to be a koala in a tree just next to the entrance but we couldn’t find it and so we comforted ourselves by saying it probably moved on, lol.

The old ruins of the military facility are nothing special but you get to a few nice lookout points along the way.

 Lookout from The Forts

Afterwards we went down to Arcadia to check out some more beaches. You literally get them every day and slowly I am getting really jaded.

In the evening I shared my free jug of beer with some fellas I met in my dorm, watched the possums rumbling around the kitchen and the lorikeets getting fed.

lots of possums on Maggy and they are quite large too

Lorikeets were the first animals I have seen

in Oz back in Brisbane's Botanical Garden

All in all Maggy was one of the best places I’ve been so far.

The next day I took the ferry back to Townsville and boarded the bus to Cairns straight away.