Townsville (June 16-20)

Townsville is the second largest city in Queensland with about 160k citizens and a lot of military presence in the area. 

So it is not unusual to see fighter planes breaking the sonic barrier over the city. It is also the gateway to the famous Yongala wreck. This is supposed to be one of the top dive site in Queensland but since I cant afford the GBR and Townsville it wasn’t hard to dismiss the Yongala. Still I would have loved to dive that wreck.

Townsville was one of the few places where I didn’t sleep at the YHA. I stayed at Reef Lodge instead which was recommended by Lonely Planet and the night in a 3 share dorm was just 22 bucks. Finally I have come that far north where you don’t have to put on any long clothes anymore and where you can stay up late just wearing shorts.

My room mates were the nicest couple I have ever come across on my trip so far. Grant and Sara from just outside of Belfast were working at a CD/DVD sale in Townsville and planned on staying there for three weeks. I watched the game Germany-Serbia (fu*king hell that sucked) with Grant and was impressed how much he knew about football. We spent entire evenings just talking about stuff and if you ever hear me saying [nei] instead of now then you know where I got it from ;-)

On the way to the hostel I noticed that the rubber on my suitcase wheel became loose and by the time I reached the hostel the rubber was completely gone and the wheel was about to break off. So unfortunately the suitcase just made it a little under 2 month before I had to replace it. In order to prevent that from happening in the future I decided to buy a proper backpack which proofed to be more difficult than expected. I checked out the local stores but those either didn’t have what I was looking for or the rucksacks (they actually use that word) were too dear (another word Grant uses frequently) . Therefore I had to take the bus to the suburbs. A clever bloke would have done that on any day between Monday and Saturday but I watched some movies I got from Sara instead and so decided to go shopping on a Sunday. N1.

I guess I don’t need to tell you how long I had to wait for the busses to get me to and from the store. Anyway, in the end I got what I wanted and so I am now [nei] a proud owner of a BlackWolf CedarCreek 75+15. They had a big sale on and I got the $330 backpack for $175.

Downsizing from 130 litres or however big my suitcase was to 80 litres was quite difficult and it took me quite long to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. In the end I had to let go of a pair of trainers, a sweater, a pair of jeans, my Lonely Planet Eastcoast, lots of ducuments and flyers, my sailing books and my beloved Gnuf hoody (courtesy of Pokerakedmie.com). Sorry for that, Micha. That hoody was really good but since I had never used it Down Under there was no sense in keeping in.

I almost cracked my bones putting on my new backpack and so I had to throw out more stuff in Cairns. From now on I am a genuine backpacker.

Enough of that bag and back to Townsville: There is the only living coral reef on display in the Reef HQ but as I will get to see that myself first hand in Cairns it was probably smarter to save the money. I would have loved to take a look at it, though.

Instead, I climbed castle to get a good view over the city. 

 Castle Hill

 Townsville viewed from Castle Hill

all green in Townsville

The track was quite steep and now I know why it is referred to as “goat track”. There are lots of points up there to overlook the whole city but after those 1315 steps I just climbed the best feature was definitely the chilled water dispenser ;-)

 Goat Track up to Castle Hill

I went there to see the sunset but unfortunately there was a big cloud in the west. But it turned out even better as the cloud opened up in some spots and merely let few sun beams thru. My camera doesn’t have much of an optical zoom and so the pic aint remotely as good as it was for real.

 sunbeams breaking thru the clouds

Town center was being under construction when I was there so Flinders ST Mall was kinda disappointing.

One thing that was worth mentioning was the fact that the public library didn’t offer WIFI. Basically a backpacker’s nightmare.