Base Backpackers (Shared Facs) Townsville

So... I have generally said that everywhere that I have been has been amazing or awesome! However, this place truly is! Imagine a place with white sandy beaches, hundreds of post-uni students, isolated island, cheap beer, 10 pound a night beach huts for accomodation and weather to die for... if you could go out anywhere for one night - let me put forward Base Hostel at Magnetic Island as a must! After a another pretty heavy night in Cairns the night before, I missed my 9am bus to Townsville.....

Ankunft am 5. Dezember 09 in Brisbane

Well Cairns and Cape Tribulation. When I last updated I had one more night in Airlie, that night I had a few beers with Caroline and Wanda from Fraser Island and then met up with a few of the people from the boat who were still around. Got up pretty early the next day for a 6 hour bus to Townsville and once there got straight on the ferry to Magnetic Island. Checked into the Base hostel there (which was pretty awful) and then chilled out around the hostel the rest of the day and night. Got ta...

It's taken us all day to travel 225km down to Magnetic Island- taxi, train, taxi, ferry, bus but at least the apartment is gorgeous! Magnetic Island is a nice place, very picturesque and our accommodation was right next to Alma Bay in Arcadia which is allegedly the best beach. Unfortuntately the weather wasn't great (very humid and cloudy) but we did manage to go to most of the towns on the Island with NellieBay being the largest (with a supermarket). Beach towns in Aus are different than we ...

Saturday it was sunny as we drove along the winding saddlebacks and twisting roads of the Yarra Valley, visiting a number of vineyards, sampling a few choice wines, and thoroughly enjoying the scenery. That night Jane and Ian departed on the last flight out of Melbourne to spend a few more days in Brisbane before finally moving back to the States. And so, Sunday morning I got up, gathered my things, and said goodbye to the Cooks. Jaimie dropped me off at the train station and I made my way to...

Had some breakkie and started off early on the scenic drive to Lake Wabby! We did a hike to the lookout of which on viewing the Hammerstone Sandblow in it's immensity! At the lookout you can view 4 different ecosystems: A desert, ocean, lake and rainforest! We hiked down to the beach and did some swimming and laying about. There were sharks in the water but not very big and not dangerous unless you put your fingers or toes into their mouths. We then did a 2km walk across the sandblow to the b...

Somehow I managed to get up at 6am today in time to catch our bus to Townsville! I was pretty thankful it was only a couple of hours drive. When we arrived at Townsville we had to wait to catch our ferry over to Magnetic Island where we would be staying for a week as Ed & I were doing a scuba diving course here. We were there with a few people from the bus the previuos week in Kroombit, Adrian, Jason, Gregg & Gabrielle and we also met Tash & Hanna who we had previously seen in Rai...

We hadn't actually intednded to go to Townsville at all prior to booking our package in Cairns but the thought of a 14hr bus ride (even an over nighter one) from Mission Beach to Airlie Beach wasn't all that appealing so we decided to break the journey up a bit by stopping off in Townsville and making the short jump off to Magnetic Island for a few days. Townsville is actually bigger than Cairns, although you wouldnt really think it. Its a sleepy enough little town by day but at night the ma...

Up very early to catch my first greyhound bus to somewhere - the destination is Townsville to get a ferry over to Magnetic Island. I really wish I booked the OZ Experience where it's a bit more lively on board - the greyhound bus is for people that are over 40 or that have no sense of adventure!. Anyways, the journey was about 2 hours I think and the Ferry over to Magentic Island did'nt take long. The only bad thing is that the weather was ****. Magentic Island is a beautifull little place wi...