Day 48 (Cairns to Horseshoe Bay, Magnetic Island, 368 km).

We got up at 7:30 in an effort to start getting on the road earlier. Unfortunately, as noted above, I was super tired the night before. I didn’t get any of my stuff around. So, we got going earlier than usual, but later than we wanted. It was 9:30 by the time we pulled out of our hotel in Cairns for our first long drive in Australia. That day’s drive was from Cairns to the ferry in Townsville for Magnetic Island.

We made a couple fun little stops along the way. The drive was 4.5 hours and our ferry reservations were for 5:00 PM with a 4:40 check-in time. Our first stop was at Etty Bay Beach. We went once again in hopes of seeing cassowaries. It was too hot when we got there. They were all off hiding in the shade.

Sometimes little oddities are fun. The town of Tully is a sugar town. There are sugarcane crops for miles and miles in the area. Along with bananas and other crops. But Tully is a sugar town. And a big golden boot town. Apparently, there is a competition between Tully and a few other towns as to which gets the most rainfall each year. The winner gets a rubber boot. In the spirit of the competition, the town of Tully erected the Golden Gumboot to lay permanent claim to the prize. The boot is 8 meters tall (26.2 feet).

We had some Subway in Tully and moved along. We had hoped to see the Jourama Falls coming out of the Great Dividing Range, the mountains to the west of us. Then we found out that the hike was nearly 2 kilometers round trip up a hill. We didn’t have time. So, we forgot about it. Until we came around a corner and saw the falls up on the side of the mountain. Woohoo! Pictures without blowing the ferry clock.

We hung out downtown in Townsville where the Magnetic Island Ferry is located. We were walking near the public beach and heard a squabble. There is a tree along the walkway that has some type of nut. A special type of nut. What nut, you ask? I don’t have a clue. But the black cockatoos love it. And they share that love loudly and proudly with all passersby. There were dozens of the biggest, most lovely colored black cockatoos dumping leaves everywhere in their quest for nuts. It was a hoot. Perhaps it was a caw. Along with the tree leaves there were nut shells, nuts and cockatoo-poo. Yup, right on a teen girl’s forehead as she walked under the tree. Danger, poo-bombers. She laughed about it so perhaps it wasn’t the trauma for her that it would have been for me. Gadzooks!

We caught the 5 PM ferry. It took about 40 minutes across. Once we were on the island, we made a beeline for the rock wallaby feeding area. These are wild rock wallabies that they actively encourage feeding pellets and carrots. We bought pellets at the ferry dock in Townsville. And we fed the rock wallabies!!!! One little one was so cute. “I will name him George. And I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him.”  

We checked into our room and then went out looking for something to eat. And looking. And looking. You know, that island pretty much closes at 7 PM. They should just put up one big sign at the ferry terminal that says ‘Welcome to Nelly Bay on Magnetic Island. We close at 7 PM.’ We found a crazy expensive place that thought it was in hoity-toity land and we mortgaged our house for dinner.

Day 49:

The main reason that we came to Magnetic Island was the koalas. In the early part of the 20th century, some folks were worried about koalas being threatened by people on the mainland. So, they brought them to magnetic island and turned them loose. Lacking any meaningful predators, the island has about 800 of them now. The most popular place to see them is along the Forts Loop. It is a trail that goes up to a WWII fort where they had a pair of artillery batteries to protect the Australian coastline from the Axis powers, especially from the Japanese Imperial Navy.

The batteries are long gone, though vestiges remain in the form of concrete buildings, floors, latrines (toilettes for us non-military folk). Yessireebob. You, too, can take a picture of a concrete sh***er while looking for koalas.

I don’t think I mentioned that it was 70% humidity and 85 degrees by 8:30 AM. We walked for two hours. The locals draw arrows on the dirt portions of path to point to the latest location for koala sightings. We didn’t see squat, even though we were told roughly where to look (in minutes of walking to be fair). By the time we reached the fort at the top, it was 88 and 80% humidity. We were out of water. My shirt was so soaking wet, rivulets of sweat had run down and soaked my short pants.

Whether from the heat, my sweat or both, the camera decided that the SD card was corrupt and wouldn’t take any more pictures. And it wouldn’t let me see all the pictures I took on the way up. Including a couple of amazing shots of a kookaburra. Okay, everybody, “Kookaburra sits on an old gum tree. Merry, merry king of the bush is he. Laugh kookaburra, laugh kookaburra. Gay your life must be. Ha, ha, ha.”

I was not laughing. I thought I had ruined the camera with the river of sweat running off me. And we had to walk down the hill with no water. We watched all the way down for arrows on the path and saw nothing. SKUNKED! Darn it!

Back at the B&B, I managed to salvage all the photos off the SD card onto my laptop. It was a micro-SD and the camera used standard SD. The adapter had fried. Nevertheless, after copying the pictures, the camera still forced me to format.

We went to Horseshoe Bay for lunch. We were staying a few blocks away from the waterfront. Faith had the idea to head over to the northwestern tip of the island. After a bit of curry for lunch, we cruised over with a short stop at the rock wallaby spot from the night before. It was blazing hot by then. 91 degrees with 80% humidity. It was lethal. Not even the dumbest of the wallabies was out in that heat. Does that mean the dumbest wallabies are smarter than us? Hmm, something to ponder.

As we made our way up the west coast of the island, we noticed a huge number of eucalyptus trees. Koalas eat nothing but eucalyptus leaves. During the day, they sleep in the crooks of eucalyptus tree branches. They move around and graze at night on the leaves. We drove like a snail hoping to see a koala. How Faith managed to spot the one she found is beyond me. It was 15 to 20 meters off the road and nearly hidden between two huge limbs of a tree. But she did it. She redeemed our insane, sweat-fest of a morning hike. It was a cute little cuddly fellow sitting high in the crook of a tree.

We went up to the tip of the island, walked around for a bit and then headed back down to enjoy the koala again. I wanted to try one more time on the hiking trail from the morning. So, we went back over and I headed up. About 20 minutes up the path, I found it! The arrow on the path was coincidentally right next to a permanent sign about staying away from the koalas and photographing at a distance. So, I did! Not too much of a distance. But a reasonable distance.

I met Faith back at the car. She stayed in the air conditioning so I could hustle up the path. We headed back down to where the rock wallabies were with the warm afterglow of cuddly little koala dreams stuck in our heads. It had cooled down into the low 80’s and a few were out. They are so bleeding cute. Did I mention that? I think I mentioned that.

We stopped off at an IGA to grab some sandwiches for dinner. We wanted to watch the sunset on that northwest tip. When we left the IGA, Google Maps put us at the lookout within one minute of sunset, 20 minutes from when we started driving. We weren’t going to make it. We headed to the west coast and took the very first little bay area we could for sunset. It turned out to be a spectacular spot with a little boat in the water and the sun dropping behind the Great Dividing Range.

It was nearly dark by the time we got back to the wallaby site. They were everywhere. In the walkways. In the bus stop. Sitting on the boulders. Between the boulders. They have to be the cutest little furballs in the world. Seriously.

Day 50 (Magnetic Island to Cape Hillsborough National Park, 390 km):

It was time to head back to the mainland and further down the coast. As we were leaving the B&B, our host asked if we had seen the rock wallabies near the ferry. I said we had and explained where we went. “There’s a better spot,” she said, “near the helicopter pad past the ferry dock.”

She told us how to get there and we went. We walked all the way out to the point of this little peninsula without seeing any of them. I figured it was just bad luck on our part. Or it was already too hot, in spite of being only 9 AM. As we were walking back to the car, Faith spotted one near a bush. A few seconds later there was another right next to us.

Faith bent down with her koala food (we got pellets that are sanctioned by the government to help the endangered rock wallabies thrive). It slowly hobbled its way up to her and ate right out of her hand. We had a hoot of a time swapping back and forth. It’s my turn. No, it’s my turn. You already had your turn. Yes, but you took longer. You’re bogarting the wallaby!

- See you in Cape Hillsborough -