Townsville – 2 weeks - 7–21 August 2011

note: double click all photos for a larger image. 
Sunday 7 August saw us on the road early en route to Townsville. It was a quiet trip on a not very interesting road. The cattle are mostly Brahmin and in one area the ant mounds were almost the same grey colour.  We had had a lunch stop on the way and were at the caravan park early in the afternoon. The sites are a nice angled back-in parking bay with a slab. This the first time we have used an angled back-in site rather than the perpendicular to the road sites. We managed this parking with aplomb and set the Annex up.

Our new neighbours - very pretty peaceful doves- their call sounds like 'Buy a bottle' at dawn and degenerates into 'Vol-u-vent' round lunchtime.

Arriving early allowed us to take a Sunday Drive along the Strand Park to see lots of families having picnics and parties in the shady areas while the more athletic ran, cycled or just strolled along the paths. We had an ice cream at the restaurant at the end of the Strand.(Hey! the 6^th Magnum is not free. The specially marked Magnums are not where I’m buying!!!!). All this did not help my sore muscles on the back so we used the iPad to find a Chiropractor to get an appointment with the next day.

Phone calls on the morning had us with an appointment with a Chiropractor, directions to pick up the polarising lenses for the new camera we had bought in Mackay but needed to pick up in Townsville. Then there was the call for fresh bread and milk and some other staples. The Chiro was excellent, found a back problem close to the sore bits and several other bits that needed some adjustment. He was very good and even called up my records from Canberra – not that they got there before he finished. This gave me a good excuse to do some short walks, drink lots of water and rest. Didn’t work!!!!

I declared a rest and recovery day on the Tuesday and Anne went exploring over to Rowes Bay with plans for a fish and chips dinner. By the next night I had some fever and, a much worse sign of Illness, was off my tucker. Anne and the iPad got onto the medical profession and after several phone calls we had a recommendation to attend an after-hours clinic where the Doctor took a sample, diagnosed a kidney infection, gave me an injection and asked me to ring his receptionist to make sure I got in to see him the next day.

One of the large mosaic statues in the park built by the Soroptimist International Service Club for professional women.  The park is in Rowes Bay, opposite Magnetic Island

Strand end of Castle Hill from Rowes Bay

A poor photo, but it does show Magnetic Island on the left and the back of the Strand on the rhs.

The mosiac scultpure of the serpent is at Rowes Beach

The Doctor’s receptionist booked us in for his lunchtime and he lined up a blood test, CT Scan and a course of antibiotic injections to go with some oral ones – very thorough!  Then we had a busy day or two finding our way around Townsville’s medical facilities.  Perhaps it is worth noting that Townsville comes in at number 13 on the list of Australia’s largest cities with a population of 186,000, lots of industry and numerous large shopping centres. So there is a good hospital and lots of medical facilities. The personnel we met were all friendly, helpful and very nice caring people. When I went back to the Chemist for a prescription for the antibiotic injections after being there earlier to get the oral ones the young chemist came out and said ” Good Heavens Mr O’Connor, Whatever went wrong in 2 hours???”  Yeah, she had all our business from there on!  The day finished with the free hamburger meet and greet at the caravan park. We found out where all the old jokes go before we left them to a singer who was pretty good and retired for the night.  Anne here: very impressed with the medical set up here: for the senior retiree, everything done of bulk-billing - even the CT scan - try that in Canberra! 

Thursday 11 saw me get another injection (in the bottom for those who are interested - Oh yes, I can hear you giggling) and a CT scan. Most of the rest of the day was rest and recovery. The Doctor lined me up for another injection (yes, T) on the Friday and recommended that we stay in town and visit him, after another blood test, on the following Friday. This suited us as we had not seen much of the town and were not firing on all cylinders.
After a quiet morning Anne took me for a drive along the beachfront from Rowes Beach and we had another quiet day.  Anne here: Amazing fact while we were at this caravan park we met a number of Canberra people, among them  Ian and Jenny who are almost Queenslanders  - Jenny belongs to Canberra Quilters and we had many friends in common.

Waterlillies in the roadside rivulets between the RAAF base and the caravan park
Some of our park neighbours told us about a celebration in Flinders Street that would run over until Sunday lunchtime with morning markets. So we went in for the event and found some interesting things. One new thing we bought was the ‘chocolate pudding fruit’ a round globular green fruit about the size of good a navel orange. We were told to keep it until it looked like it would decompose on touch and then to cut it in half and serve it with ice cream or yogurt. It looks like a very dark chocolate mousse but is very mild tasting. While in Flinders St we had lunch at the Cowboys Club – that would be the NRL Football Team’s clubhouse.

A visit to the Reef HQ Aquarium in Townsville is a must. There is a very large aquarium well populated with many species of fish plus a number of smaller display tanks for the more bite size morsels. Besides that , it is cool and stinger free. We spent a long afternoon in there. Anne here: There is also a Turtle Hospital attached and I learned that turtles think plastic bags are jelly fish and while the vets can dissolve that with medicines, the hard clear plastics rip up the turtle insides so badly they almost always die. We did not go out to Magnetic Island as we gained the impression that it needs time to recover from Cyclone Yasi

Following shots taken at Reef HQ Aquarium - hard to take good shots at an aquarium

Clown fish

And his mate Dory - for Kendra

Monday saw us visit the Queensland Museum of Natural History to see a great range of corals (unfortunately all dead so in a bleached white condition rather than in their colourful natural state). There were a number of other exhibits and well constructed scenes of typical North Queensland places complete with birds and other animals. Unfortunately the exhibits were showing signs of the perennial problem faced by museums – how to keep the exhibits from gathering dust. This was the closest we have come to a blue winged kookaburra.

Townsville’s northern beaches up as far as Rollingstone  (and checking out some free camping sites ) took up most of the Tuesday. The free camping sites vary in amenity and seem to be well patronised by people who are happy to camp close to each other in a very orderly way. The ones we visited seemed to be filling up by late morning and were a bit too close for us to consider as an option when we leave Townsville. The northern beaches are long stretches of sand with a long shallow beachfront of fairly coarse sand. We found some washed up coral and lots of washed up shell pieces plus the odd coconut at Balgal Bay.  We also had a quick look at Saunders Beach, Toolakea and Blue Waters where a spacious rather empty caravan park competed against a very crowded small free camp.

Coral on Balgal Beach

A blood test for me on Wednesday 17 reinforced the impression that I was getting over the infection. We gave the Caravan Park Happy Hour a miss and went to Sizzlers for dinner. Later that evening I came face to face with a possum and he backed off so I guess I am also looking a lot stronger than last week.

Anne here: My first view of Townsville was Pyramid Hill, about 900 metres high, which we learned later has a race up and down it every August - madness takes you young in the tropics. Second vista was this great lump of clay in the middle of town and I thought why would any town leave such a hideous heap of dirt right in the middle. Turned out to be Castle Hill with almost 360 degree views all round town and it is a bit ugly in the Dry, because the green grass that cloaks it in the wet has all browned off! 

View of Magnetic Island, Rowes Bay to the left and North Ward of Townsville from top of Castle Hill

We had lunch and a nice afternoon in Queens Park the local botanical gardens at the foot of Castle Hill.  It was lovely to see all the tropical plants and beautiful green grass.  

Jim even found a cactus garden!

Castle Hill from Queens Park Botanic Gardens

The usual suspect takes a break among the palms

The fig under which we had lunch

Magnicent Indian Mango with a Rain Tree directly behind it

So cool and lush on a hot day

Lowes Menswear advertised a sale so we did the round of the large shopping centres getting some more suitable summer clothes. The choice is so much wider up here although a number of the locals are groaning about the cold. It is amusing to see people in outfits as disparate as the knee high boots skirt and long sleeved top with even a leather jacket and scarf walking along behind someone in a light sarong over a bikini and thongs – not sure how the blokes are dressed...

 In the evening we went into town to the Strand to attend a multicultural event.  This cross-cultural festival is an annual event that runs for about a fortnight and occupies a very large outdoor covered theatre and is surrounded by food and market stalls. We struck the Indian (Bolliwood) and Africa night which was entertaining. The acts were mostly very high energy song and dance routines and the participants were quite obviously enjoying themselves. Later that evening the possum came near our site but departed when I appeared.

Aerial view of Townsville photo by www.intownsville.com.au

Anne here: I have been very impressed by the major NQ councils who incorporate free pools, water parks, playgrounds, outdoor theatres, etc into their foreshores - seems as though they are treating their populations like people rather than rating units.

Strand water playground for kids.

photo by www.intownsville.com.au

The Doctor was satisfied with my progress toward a recovery and had a letter to my GP already written when we got in to see him on the Friday.  We celebrated by a visit to several book exchanges (second hand book shops) to stock up on the reading material. At one shop we were lucky enough to find some books that Anne had been looking for since we left Maitland. We finished the day off with a bit of shopping.

Saturday was pack up and get ready to move day so I was returning from fuelling the car when a police car came into the park behind me. I thought that they were very pushy and on the narrow one-way lanes in the park was looking for a way to get out of their road when we got nearly to my site. I pulled over just as a ute with a partly packed camper trailer exploded out of the site ahead of me and sprayed a brass object into my path. I pulled over harder and the police car bustled past to pursue the ute.  A bleep of the police siren must have distracted the driver as he turned up a one-way lane facing an oncoming car and caravan and then took a dive into an empty site. I parked, picked up the two brass padlocks and took them back to the partly vacated site where I found a five dollar note about to blow away from a wallet on the ground. I reckoned the police would be back so I used the locks to weigh down the note on top of the wallet and retired to our nearby site.

Well, you would not believe the stories – Drugs, Drink, Mental Illness, Shop Theft (how did you get the TV out of Dick Smiths?), Break and Enter, Stealing his parents camper, unregistered vehicle (had his jumper hiding the number plate) and some like ‘I gave him my old TV’, ‘he told me he was going to get the camper serviced and resprayed as a surprise for his dad’. The police and the young bloke driving the ute left after a visit to the campsite by the policewoman who retrieved the wallet.  Then a number of ‘interested parties’ helped the parents put the campsite back together.  We packed up our site in readiness for the move next day, Sunday 21, to Etty Bay.

Anne here: The Coral Coast Caravan Park is a very nice park, plenty of shade from small trees, good amenities, easy sites for backing etc.  It has one enormous drawback - noise.  Situated on the Ingham Road, at the end of the runway for the International Airport, right next door to the RAAF base and on the other side a huge noisy industrial suburb that stretched for miles, not to mention the bird life - all of them start at about 5-6am.   

Reveille RAAF style Townsville

Home for happy hour!