When the caretaker arrived however she was quite snarly because it turned out we had been quoted the wrong fee and she wanted us to pay $10 extra. we pointed out that we had brought what we were quoted and were already set up as per the discussion we had had earlier on the phone. In the end she took the original amount but advised as we left that we shouldn’t be there anyway as it was set up for retired travellers not people with kids( which we found strange as we were quoted a price for including the kids when we had rung earlier) and that we would need to work out whether we wanted to stay the two nights we had originally intended and pay the full amount for the second day if that was the case.
In reality we would have moved simply due to her attitude if it wasn't that we had already organised to spend the next day on Magnetic Island, with an early start and late finish, so packing and setting the van up as well really wasn’t an option.
The next morning we actually proved we can do early starts, with us all sorted, into Townsville and onto a ferry before 9am. As we were on the way across we realised it was possibly the first time the kids had actually been on a boat in the ocean as opposed to creeks, rivers, bays etc.
On arriving we picked up a Mini Moke (which we had organised previously).
It was over 20 years since I had last been on Magnetic island and at that time the Mini Moke was by far the most prevalent form of transport around the island. In addition the first vehicle I ever drove was a Moke so i wanted the opportunity for the rest of the family to experience the island in the same manner I had previously and also thought it may be the only chance any of them have to ride in a Moke.We ventured straight from there to Arcadia to visit an old family friend. Colin has been on the island for over 40 years now and is well into his nineties
, but before that spent some years as a rabbit trapper in Balingup and became very firm friends with my parents. This included many visits of his across to us as well as us going the other way and it was great to see him again as I hadn’t seen him for some years. As it happened we were also able to get a red Moke, which was the same colour and fit-out as Colin’s was before he stopped driving.Colin then took us on an extensive tour of the island for the rest of the day. We started at Alma Bay, which I think the kids would have stayed at if they had the choice.
They loved the opportunity of playing in the sand, which was quite gritty from being predominantly made up of shells and gave them a whole different sandcastle experience to what they are used to.We then headed over to horseshoe Bay for fish and chips, including probably the best crumbed fish I have ever had – Liz and I were talking about this later and decided it was probably entirely due to the crumb itself.
From there we headed almost as far the other way as we were allowed to take a hire vehicle and wandered around Picnic Bay. Picnic Bay used to be the disembarkation point for the ferry and a boulevard and shopping precinct was built around this. A number of years ago however a new wharf was built at Nelly Bay and Picnic Bay now has a pauper-like feeling about much of it. I spent a large part of the time looking at it with a level of sadness as it seemed such an opportunity if only someone could come up with something to do with it. The level of infrastructure in place is remarkable.
Another interesting thing while we were there was the original jetty. $500,000 was spent on this to do it up last year in order to maintain he heritage link, with it being reopened late in 2010 on for Cyclone Yasi to damage it in February with it being closed again ever since. It seems such a pity for all this money and effort to have come to absolutely nothing and apparently all the debates on whether to repair or remove it have started again.
By the end of the visit Max had decided that Magnetic Island was the first place we had visited on the entire trip that he would like to move to. Colin’s health and stamina was also phenomenal
– he tootled around with us all day and still lives on his own, in a house that sits up quite a steep driveway followed by three flights of stairs. Not a bad effort for someone over 90. In fact he doesn’t look particularly different to my previous memories of him, leaving me to think that there is some sort of fountain of youth on the island that he has discovered.On the way home we rode on the top (open) deck of the ferry and the kids had such a good time in the wind that the return trip alone was worth the day in itself without all the other wonderful experiences we managed to cram into our time there.
We finished the day by finding a Toys ‘R’ Us store in Townsville. Mum had given Harry a voucher for his birthday and we hadn’t seen one since so it was with great excitement that he wandered the aisles before settling an a Pokemon game for his DS.
Our Black River Stadium experience was topped off when we arrived back to find the gates locked. We rang the caretakers number and were advised that they had noticed we hadn’t returned and had left a key for us under a rock but it turned out we were the only people in the campsite that hadn’t been advised that the gates were locked at 6pm. It turned out that when we had first set up the caretaker hadn’t bothered to run through a lot of the important info about the place as she was hoping that we would move on the next morning!
The next morning we did move on – heading for Cairns. Interestingly looked up the caravan park on Trip Advisor and several of the comments were along the lines of “great place to stay except for the attitude of the caretaker”, so obviously we aren’t the only ones to have had an ‘interesting’ reception.
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