Magnetic Island

We arrived in Townsville at lunch time and headed straight for the ferry to Magnetic Island.

We'd booked to stay at Base Backpacker hostel which was right on the beach in Nelly Bay. It was a nice place, very open planned as usually it is sunny all the time. Unfortunately, for the whole week we were there it was cloudy...

So, to be truthful, we didn't do much. Our first day we hired bikes and decided to head over to Horse Shoe Bay on the other side of the island. We were chatting to the guy and he said the island was only small and we could easily get round on a bike. Annoyingly, he forgot to mention that between Nelly Bay and Horse Shoe Bay there is a rather large mountain....

Now, we wanted to do a bit of exercise but to climb this big bloody hill on a bike you'd have to have the fitness of Lance Armstrong, and we cleary don't. We tried riding our bikes for the first 10 metres but then as soon as the gradient turned from 10% to 80% (well it felt like 80%!) we had to get off and push. And it was really hot too so we were really sweaty - you get the picture! It was so bad that at one point Emma stopped and said she couldn't go any further. I was a bit ahead and so lied and said that the summit was just around the corner and then it was all downhill. She was slightly miffed when it wasn't!

It was torture but we did it and the ride downhill to Horse Shoe Bay was nice! Unfortunately there wasn't much to do on this side of the island either so we had lunch and headed back. Another climb and then a nice free ride down. Pushing the bikes up took over an hour, riding down took about 6 minutes...

The bike hire bloke thought it was very funny that we had cycled all the way there and back but he was impressed too and we were pretty pleased with ourselves too. Sometimes it's just the small things which make you happy!!

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. We met up with Sian and Fiona from our sailing trip, we did a lot of walking, we read, we ate a LOT. The cafe at the hostel was really good and did $10 meals. The lasagne was Emma's favourite, she had it 3 times (not in one day, although I'm sure she would if I'd have let her, ha ha ha!!!).

We went to the docs for Emma's 3rd injection and he had a look at my bed bug bites. He said it was the worst he'd ever seen and wished that he'd had a camera to take a picture and put it in some medical journal!!! He gave me some steroid cream and a sympathetic smile and then washed his hands thouroughly!

We had a trip into Townsville (on the mainland) and immediately wished we hadn't. It's like a town that time forgot. There's hardly anyone about and there's not much to do unless you get there before 12pm because after that time, everything closes.
Emma made me sit in a cafe and eat cake to pass the time - the things I do for her. We got the early ferry back to Magnetic Island and had Lasagne to make ourselves feel better.

Next stop Cairns.