It may have confused Captain Cook's compass prompting the name 'Magnetic Island' but it certainly didn't confuse our's. The minute we heard about the idylic island just off Townsville, famous for it's sandy beaches, mokes (all will be revealed) and the biggest free roaming population of Koalas in Aus, we knew the direction we were taking. To Magnetic Island, James, and don't spare the horses, um, ferry.
Alighting from our
McCafferty bus at Townsville we walked half way across town to the ferry terminal chomping take-away pizza as we expended our energy on negotiating our backpacks. We arrived late,
slightly disorientated and checked into the hostel that formed part of our
East Coast Mega Deal package. Pretty grubby but a great location and we awoke to a view straight out to Horseshoe Bay. We hired one of the famous open-topped
Magnetic Mokes to get us round the island...all 26km of it. With us all crammed into the tiny car (and we thought the Daihatsu Charade was small?) we traversed the hills, stopping at the safe enclosures (netted to protect from stingers) for a swim and snorkel along the way. We spotted a Dugong (a cross between a dolphin and a seal) in the water and we added it to the growing list of bizarre looking Aussie creatures we had already seen on our travels! Unfortunately for Steve the Moke was bright pink (democracy rules in our happy trio and he's outnumbered!) and a much of our exploration was spent with him shrinking as far down the driver seat as possible with Beth and Lucy both fantastising they were Penelope Pitstop!
The Koalas proved as elusive as the Kiwi in New Zealand but that aside, we would have been more than happy if the Ferry's compass had got confused and taken us straight back to the delightful Magnetic Island.
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