Townsville (unofficial capital of north) Queensland

James Cook visited the Townsville region on his first voyage in 1770 but did not actually land. Cook named the nearby Cleveland Bay and Magnetic Island. There were many indigenous groups living in this area, the Wulgurukaba, Bindal, Girrugubba, Warakami and Nawagi amongst others. In 1846, James Morrill was shipwrecked from the Peruvian, living in the Townsville area among the Bindal people for 17 years before being found by white men and returned to Brisbane. There are more Aborigines in Townsville than we have seen anywhere else but they seem to spend their time sitting around in groups on the grass getting drunk; they haven’t taken well to the western ways. Townsville was declared a municipality in 1866 with John Melton Black elected as its first Mayor.

During the Second World War Townsville hosted over 50,000 American and Australian troops and air crew from 7 airfields and bases around the area. Townsville has one of the youngest populations in Australia with lots of people coming and going. I guess all towns that have large quantities of troops in the area all serving a 6 months tour take on a certain personality. I wonder how the Townsville Crocodiles got their name.

I was a bit reluctant to fire up the Barbie as it looked so new and clean but Geoff rang earlier and said, “Go for it”. I couldn’t get the ceramic hob going so had to use it in the end, both to boil the new spuds and cook the pork steaks we had bought from Woolworth’s. Although Woolies have sadly disappeared from England and the USA they are going strong in Australia but it’s only by name as they sell groceries like Tesco. Every town has one or more and they all have a very similar layout whichever one you go in, even between states; I wish Mr Tesco would do the same instead of moving everything around every couple of months. I look a little startled in the photo because I had set the automatic shutter and ran around into position; almost made it.

We headed off to walk the Strand before it got too hot but missed it; I think you need to start out before 6am to do that. It was a real scorcher today, but this is exactly the weather that I anticipated before we got here. We are well into the rainy season but are having great luck at the moment; when we drove to Townsville we crossed several large bridges over dried up river beds and there was plenty growing in the middle so I guess they have been dry for some time. It’s only a matter of time before it catches up with us. The Strand goes past the memorial park, trees, wild life, the beach and sea and we caught our first glimpse of Magnetic Island. I think the white birds with black heads are Ibis and over here they are scavengers but in ancient Egypt they were Gods because they flew up the Nile, year after year, a few hours ahead of the river tidal wave which irrigated the land and brought life for another year. They have found tens of thousands of mummified birds in Egypt but I bet they didn’t wait for them to die naturally before mummifying them; seems a strange way to treat Gods to me.

We spotted another sort of bird that looked a little like a black Cockatoo with colourful inner tail feathers. We heard a squawking and spotted lots of them in the tree together and they were pecking off leaves, twigs and fruit like there was no tomorrow making a dreadful mess on the ground. We also saw a huge, brilliant blue Ulysses butterfly flutter by but it couldn't find anywhere to land. There seems a lot to do for children in Townsville with parks and climbing things all along the front as well as museums and wild life parks.

We walked back in the heat to the river and walked across Dean Street Bridge to the South side, turned first left onto Palmer Street where all the restaurants are. Quite a few are only open for dinner but we found a nice one called Michels where we had a lovely lunch and headed back across the Victoria Bridge to the car ready to pick up more supplies from Woolworth’s to take home. We spent the rest of the day in and out of the pool trying to keep a stable temperature and catching up on some reading; this is what a holiday is supposed to be like but it doesn’t make good reading.