Townsville

We journeyed to Australia in part to visit our high school friend Melita. She lives in Townsville, Queensland. It is up the coast from Brisbane, about a 3 hour plane ride from Sydney. It is quite hot there, and we discovered it is also quite tropical. Describing the area as coastal tropics would be apt. Old friends meet up:

After the hustle and bustle of 8 nights in Sydney, Townsville was much more relaxed. It was very hot every day, even when it rained it was still hot. We spent a lot of time in Melita's backyard. I was in charge of cooking, this is literally
Shrimp on the Barbie:

The second day there we visited the Billabong Sanctuary, look below this post a couple for that post. The Billabong was definitely a highlight that deserved it's own post.

Townsville has it's very own hill in town. You can climb up it, taking approximately an hour or drive up (we drove). From here you can see 360 views of the city and just outside the city you can see the virtually neverending sugar cane fields. This is looking out toward The Strand (the beach area), Magnetic Island and the Great Barrier Reef beyond:

The Strand is 2.5 km stretch of beach in the heart of Townsville. But due to 'Stinger Season' you can only safely swin inside these nets:

Stingers are what we would call jelly fish. There are four types of stingers, a few of which can kill a person. The others just hurt like crazy. If you get stung, you need to flush the sting with vinegar for 30 seconds. And just in case you don't have a jar of balsamic ready:

These Aussies take their Stinger's very seriously, every beach without the nets looked like this:


Another thing that the Aussies take seriously is sunscreen and UV exposure. Every morning the radio would report the UV index along with the weather forecast. Each day we were in Townsville the UV index was 16. 0 is night, 11 is considered extremely dangerous and the highest ever recorded is 18. When you are outside and stand still for even a second, you can almost feel your skin burning. It is much more intense sun than we have ever felt. The hole in the Ozone layer that resides over the South Pole is definitely felt down here. Understandably, a lot of the news and papers have daily articles about climate change:

This child's play area would NEVER work in the US. Another example of the 'no worries, mate' lifestyle:

I might print this out and hand out as a postcard for all of you with kids so you don't have repeat:

Overall Townsville is pretty cool. It reminds me a bit of the Tri-Cities (180,000 residents) but with the ocean instead of the river. The town originated in support of the mines with farming a significant portion and a very active port shipping the mines and sugar cane refined output. Plus Townsville is the major city in an otherwise pretty isolated area. They do have teams in a lot of the major sports leagues including the A-League (soccer), NRL (Rugby League) and NBL (basketball). But Rugby along with state cricket is king.

Lastly, they do have these in some yards: