Magnetic Island

Oh it felt good to sleep in a proper, clean bed again. We had noticed the previous night that in stark contrast to the Reef in Cairns it got very quiet after 10pm, and it seemed like we were the brash, noisy ones. Not that we were being brash. Or noisy for that matter. We didn’t have breakfast included in the hostel so I set about making some inroads into the 1kg blackberry yoghurt that I had purchased from Woolworths the day before. We did get free tea and coffee though so after we had downed them and got our stuff together we were heading out for the ferry terminal again.

We managed to get down there to catch the 9:30 ferry across to Magnetic Island. It was only a 25 minute trip there, on a catamaran, and it was windy up on deck. We had scoped out a walk that would mean the possibility of seeing Koala bears in the wild, but we didn’t really think that we would be that lucky. We caught the bus from Nelly Bay to the Fort Walks stop and set about the long trek up to the forts and then back down and round to Horseshoe Bay. All in all it was looking at around 3 hours or so, but that would be without us messing around and looking every few steps for Koala bears. But then we saw a sign that advised us to be on the lookout for Death Adders too. Well, our hour trip looked like it would be a lot longer now! But there was no other info, nothing to say “don’t go near rocks, or fallen trees”, just to look out for them. And so we set off on our journey to the Forts and hoped to see one of the little furry blighters along the way. A Koala of course, not a Death Adder.

Arthur's Bay

It was hot. We trekked along the dusty trail on constant lookout for Koalas and Death Adders, and we saw neither. One of the funniest things that happened on the trek was James get scared witless by a massive big black……butterfly. He claimed that he thought it might have been a Flying Fox, but I still have my doubts. After about an hour or so we hit the Forts area. A collection of old gun emplacements and communication towers not utilised since the 40’s. We ran into a few other people around there, which was a distinct difference to New Zealand, where we were very much off-peak season rather than just beginning to peak, as it were in Oz. As we investigated the remains of the old buildings and guns (and after I scared the beejeezus out of James by hiding in the darkened prison cell) we headed up to the communication tower at the top of the hill. There were a few people crowding round and James pointed out a tiny little Koala sitting in the tree not far away. Bingo! It was a small mother with an even smaller baby clinging on, having a nap in the midday sun. Quite how they hold on I will never know, but we took our snaps and video footage whilst we could and then set off back to the start of the trail.

Koala mum and baby

Thankfully we never did come across any Death Adders, and when we got to the start of the trail again we took the next path over that would take us down to Horseshoe Bay via a number of smaller bays along the way. We had our lunch at Arthur’s Bay, on top of the large boulders that lined the beach amid the crashing waves. Not bad for a Monday. Afterwards I ignored all warnings of going swimming after eating and went out into the ocean. It was cold, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had swam in the actual sea, but it was very enjoyable, and made all the better by the fact that there were only about 5 other people on the entire beach with us. Once I had been thoroughly drenched and tossed about by the fearsome waves we set off for the next bay.

I lose track of how many little bays we walked along before we eventually got to Horseshoe Bay, but most of them all looked exactly the same to Arthur’s Bay, and they were all very poorly signposted. I had also run out of water having had to splash my face with my bottle of water to get rid of the salt that had become infused in my beard. It had taken a long time and a lot of thigh-work to get to Horseshoe Bay and when we got there it was……alright. Nothing mind-blowing, but more of a bigger and better bay than the ones we had visited previously. It was getting late in the day so we hopped on the bus back to the ferry terminal at Nelly’s Bay and got there just in time to catch the catamaran back to the mainland. From there we stopped in at the Woolworths again and got food and drink for the evening. We needed to check our Couchsurfing requests as they would affect where we would be staying for the next few nights. There hadn’t been many out there for where we needed and they seemed to be quite slow in coming back to us, and we had not had any luck once we checked after showers and dinner. So we booked into a hotel for our next stop, then another hotel for the nights after that, then the tickets for the Greyhound, and then relaxed with another glass of 7 buck chuck.