It's been a while since my last post, we were moving faster than before but are now happily settled in our cute Peregian Beach Airbnb. So I can catch up :)
Townsville
As the title of this post suggests, we've been up a big hill and making
our way South the last 10 days. Our first stop, the one with that big hill (also known as
Castle Hill), was Townsville. Townsville is another beautiful tropical
North Queensland city, bigger than Cairns but less touristy it seemed.
Coming off our Cairns high, I have to say it will be hard to beat Cairns
in our eyes. Townsville was similar in climate but had less vegetation
overall, and again there were a lot of hills and it was HOT.
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| Why are you so expensive??? We are sticking with wine. |
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| Melting gelato! Mango, green apple, and melon (Justin's) & honeycomb chocolate, lemon, and tim tam (Mine) |
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| Steps up to our Airbnb (not pictured: the hill to get to stairs) |
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| The rock pool, filtered salt water but can't be guaranteed to not have jelly fish :-/ |
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| The sand flies loved Justin's hat |
Castle Hill
I had scribbled something about climbing Castle Hill in my list of things we could do, but hadn't realized our Airbnb would back up to it. Justin got all googly-eyed when he saw it, and literally an hour after arriving to our Airbnb he was running up it. In case you are wondering what running up this huge hill means, his stats are below. In case you are wondering what I did instead, it involved a nice shower and a little nap :)
I didn't make it up until two days later, when we hiked up the trail to catch the sunset at the top. Man it was a tough climb, but was a lot of fun and the view was absolutely worth the climb.
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| Castle Hill, view from the Strand! |
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| Magnetic Island in the Distance |
And if you're wondering, Justin ran the hill 5 out of the barely 6 days we were in Townsville. He is a machine!! On top of that we also walked everywhere, and it was super hilly, so we were getting our workouts in for sure... vacations with Justin sure involve a lot of that... but it helps balance my dessert habit :)
Magnetic Island
This is the main reason I chose to stop in Townsville, to see the koalas on Magnetic Island! I had read you should be able to see koalas in the wild if you hiked the forts walk on the island (WWII forts). It was another HOT day, and no shade on the trail, to top that off we passed a couple of people headed back who said they didn't see any koalas. We decided to stick it out and keep our eyes open just in case, and about halfway up the trail we saw a couple looking up in the trees, they had found a koala! Not just one either, it was a koala with her joey! The little baby's head popped over the side of her every now and then. So, we can officially say we saw koalas for the first time in the wild! We then saw another one once we were on our way back, someone else had spotted one. So my advice is to hike the trail and look for a cluster of people looking up in the trees :)
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| Pretty far from home! |
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| Look closely :) |
The views from the forts hike were also very beautiful, could see some of the different bays on Magnetic Island and all the way back to Townsville.
We then decided to visit the Bungalow Bay Koala Village, just a short bit away from the forts walk near Horseshoe Bay. The sanctuary itself was a lot smaller than I was expecting, the guide took us back to a large sitting area with benches and you could basically see the whole area from there. She brought out a baby salt water crocodile, a sea turtle, several tropical birds, and a python. We also got to see the reptile enclosure where we could hold the Australian blue tongued lizard and the shingle backed lizard.
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| Feed the birds.... song Mom & Dad like is in my head |
For the main event, we got to peak at the different koalas in their trees, and then hold one for a picture. You had to stay very still and the guide placed your hand around the koalas. They just emphasized no rocking it like a baby, it obviously likes to hold on to very still trees :) Their hair is a lot rougher than you would imagine, but they are very sweet looking! I feel a little bad for the small areas this place had them in, but they seemed very content and sleeping away the afternoon.
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| This little joey was the cutest thing! Such a ham! |
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| We both got to hold the koala, but I like this one of both of us :) |
Diving the SS Yongala
After 5 nights in Townsville, we hopped on the Greyhound again and headed south to Ayr. Another shout out to Greyhound, it's a great bus with lots of convenient stops and comfy seats.
So, why Ayr? We were two of three people getting off at this stop, but we were all headed to dive the SS Yongala. This is a shipwreck right off the coast of Alva Beach (about 30 min from Ayr, with no stores or anything... very small). It's supposedly one of the best wreck dives in the world, and I will say it did live up to the hype.
The SS Yongala lies about 35 minutes off the coast of Alva Beach in open
sea, so a much better option than the 3 hour boat ride from Townsville.
The Yongala is kind of an Australian Titanic, at the time she was the
top of the line cruise ship in the area, and one of the first to have
electricity on board. While making her way to Cairns, where a custom
radio was to be installed, she hit a bad storm with a cyclone, and sank.
All 121 passengers perished at sea. Two people running the lighthouse
nearby were the last to see her, and could have warned the captain had
the radio been installed.
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| Dive Map |
Anyway... very tragic story but it is now completely covered in coral
and teeming with sea life of all kinds. We saw sea turtles, huge
humphead wrasses, bigger tropical fish than normal, a guitar shark (so
awesome), sea snakes (most poisonous snakes in the world), moray eels,
etc. Usually bull sharks are there, and may have been, but the
visibility was about 5-6 meters.
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| Guitar Shark! |
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| Sea Snake |
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| Down the line.... |
It was quite a bit different than the Great Barrier Reef, visibility was worse and currents near the surface are very strong in the open sea. To get down to the wreck you swim out following a line to the buoy marking the descent line. You then have to hold on to the rope as you descend, then follow a second rope to the actual ship. The ship lies in the sand at about 92 feet deep, but you can see the top deck and the parts with more sea life between 75-85 feet, and the currents calm down the closer to the ship you get. The pictures really don't do it justice, it was really impressive to see so much sea life in one spot. I would say more than we ever saw in one spot on the Great Barrier Reef. Glad we did it!
Airlie Beach & The Whitsundays
We weren't very happy with our Ayr Airbnb, so at the last minute we canceled our second night and booked an extra night in Airlie Beach. Both of us agreed we could easily come back for longer to Airlie Beach, it was a beautiful area with an awesome public lagoon area. It was super touristy with lots of souvenir shops and stores in general, but we enjoyed the vibe. I really hadn't read up on Airlie Beach, my main focus here was on the Whitsunday islands, so Airlie Beach was one of those unexpected favorites.
The second day here we got to see the Whitsundays (well one of the 70+ islands), on an Ocean Rafting tour. We booked the Southern Lights tour which involved about an hour and a half high speed raft ride out and around part of the biggest island, Whitsunday Island. The ride itself was awesome, we loved how fast the raft when (up to 70 knots), and it was a lot of bouncing around with the waves being a little choppy. I think out of the whole day my favorite part was probably the ride itself, and Justin & I got to sit in the front row!! I just love being on the water, or under the water, and could really do either of those every day.
We then stopped at one end of Whitehaven beach (super fine, white sand beach... I think it's 98% silica where normal beaches are like 60 something percent). We walked along the beach and then took a bush walking trail to two lookouts which were absolutely gorgeous.
Next, the raft took us across to another island, where we snorkeled for an hour. As divers, snorkeling wasn't quite the same thrill but I still really enjoyed it. The reef had lots of smaller tropical fish, pretty coral, and bright blue clams. And of course, we goofed around a lot per usual.
We then went back to the other end of Whitehaven beach, and had a buffet lunch on the boat / beach. We had about 2 hours to eat and hang out. Justin and I spotted a seaplane while here, and decided if we go back that would be awesome to do! I think it would also be a cool place to skydive.
Overall we really enjoyed our time in those three cities, but are excited to enjoy some relaxing days here in Peregian Beach catching up on work and exploring the Sunshine Coast! Hope to explore Noosa and see Fraser Island while we are here.
Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving back in the US!! It was weird seeing the cousin picture and not being in it, but it looks like everyone had a great time, well as much fun as they can have without me :-P I missed my mom's sweet potato casserole, being with the fam, and of course being with Justin's family too!! We love all of you so much! Hope you had an extra serving for me (or glass(es) of champagne), and an extra two servings for Justin ;)
Till next time,
Sarah
"Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you-it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you... Hopefully, you leave something good behind." ~ Anthony Bourdain
p.s: Starting to get really used to cars driving on the left side, both when we walk around and when driving. Hope it's not going to be weird when we get home now! Successfully drove on the left the whole time to our current spot (we have a rental car for a while now).
