Flag Townsville Plaza Hotel

Heading eastwards from the inland gemstone country, we were now back in the coastal area. There were more signs of habitation than there were inland and there is more cultivation of the land (mostly acres and acres of sugarcane interwoven with fantastic narrow gauge railways to take the cane from field to field to the sugar cane works where it is turned, predictably, into sugar)) but the roads are still incredibly straight for many a mile.

Townsville, Queensland, Australia jenandtony

... br>


This is the beach off the strand ..And by shear good fortune the motel was just across the road from where this picture was taken ...















Note the water temperature of 24C :O) Not that Jill would agree having taken feet out of 40C ...

... of any personal problems but because we are both working on different budgets and timescales and want to see different things but im hoping in a few months we will meet up in the south for a bit before i come home. On August the 3rd i need to be in Sydney as i am now flying to Auckland for just under a month where i will meet a mate Rhys and will spend a month or 2 travelling with him. So i have a month to head down the east coast to Sydney, then a month away in New Zealand and then come ...

... things to do and is very modern.  My favourite was a water play park - you can see pictures on Steve's Picasa site (see the opening comments on this blog to get the site address to link to). The kids just loved this area.  There were children's play grounds for varying ages, BBQs, picnic places, a couple of sheltered beach areas to swim, a rock pool that looked great, some exercise areas for all the walkers, joggers and cyclists to do bench ...

... east towards Charters Towers which was to be our next stop.

The two major towns on this leg of the journey are Hughendon & Julia Creek whilst we did not stop at the first town (only for fuel) we continued on to Julia Creek where we stopped for lunch again these country towns offer a lot to the traveling public.

After Julia Creek we pushed on to Charters Towers on arrival we checked into the Big 4 ...

Okay, we have calmed down now from our over excitement back in Charters Towers. We spent a couple of days here parked next to the huge road trains at this truck-stop. The one thing that brought us here was Reef HQ, which is an aquarium and the only place where you can see some coral reef without leaving land. They have somehow created a coral reef using an old sunken ship and a heap of fish from the GBR. We learned about some of the dangers of the sea on a tour ...

... views over the whole area, amazing. The lookout was a real exercise area, there's people running everywhere there's cyclists and personal trainers putting groups through the ropes. After dinner that evening we parked down the city and went to watch Australia the movie. Wednesday 3rd Today we are up at 7.30 as we must get sorted as we are going parking the van up and going on an overnight trip to Magnetic Island, which is 40mins ferry journey from Townsville.

... the time we got back to the office, removed our helmets & harnesses, thanked the guys and were dropped back at our Farm Stay.



Our kind hostess let us have quick showers when we got back, and then we ...