adventures of a wandering ginger: Maggie!

Luckily, after such a crap time in Townsville I was moving onto the lovely little gem that is Magnetic Island (or Maggie as locals call it - those Aussies love their abbreviations). I was warned that the quick 20 minute ferry ride over to the island could be quite nauseating, but it was a calm day and smooth sailing. My stomach was thankful.

Magnetic Island is home to a few small communities and just over 2000 people (not including backpackers). It's so small in fact, that a lot of the local entertainment seems to be proved by events organized by the hostels. Coconut bowling (just what it sounds like - bowling with a coconut) at my hostel seemed to be quite popular with backpackers and locals alike.

I stayed at Bungalow Bay Koala Village in Maggie's own Horseshoe Bay. It was nice and quiet with both camping and nice little bungalows scattered about the large property. They were a little on the cramped side, but quite nice and had their own bathroom.

I celebrated my regained health with some lovely time relaxing on the beach and by the pool at the hostel (the water at Horseshoe Bay was pretty murky and not so nice for swimming). I had my first dinner on Maggie at the hostel pub. It was pretty terrible food, which turned out to be a blessing as being able to ditch my meal halfway through meant not only escaping the bad food, but also the creepy local man (who appeared to have followed me back from the beach) sitting a few seats down from me at the bar talking to himself. Thankfully I didn't run into him again after that (don't worry mummy).

I met a couple of really nice English girls in my room, Sophie and Caroline. They were both on a post-law school break; it was quite refreshing to have someone actually understand what I meant when I said I used to work in IP for a software company rather than the usual semi-blank stare followed by "that sounds...interesting..." I joined up with them for a pretty packed day of a tour of the wildlife centre at the hostel, feeding wild wallabies and wild koala hunting. That night was also coconut bowling, which I turned out to be quite good at. I managed a near spare - 9 pins with my 2 bowls - and a free beer.

The wildlife centre tour was quite good. A small group and we got to hold lots of animals!

Cockatoos are indigenous to Australia. This is a red-tailed black cockatoo (surprise, surprise). I am not actually kissing the bird - he just took a sunflower seed from between my lips.

I can't remember what this was called. It's some kind of scaly lizard. They are surprisingly dense.

Baby crocodile! She had to have her mouth taped shut so she wouldn't bite our fingers off. Apparently she can't tell because crocs don't have the muscles to open their mouths, only to snap them shut super fast on their unsuspecting prey. They can only open their mouths by letting gravity do its work. I still felt kind of bad about it though...

Some kind of python. It didn't try to squeeze me to death.

Feeding wild wallabies!

You can buy pellets to feed them from the newsagent stand. I'm not feeding them popcorn, which it kind of looks like.

This one had a little joey in its pocket. It was more creepy than cute. It looks kind of like a super rat-looking chihuahua.

For the most part this was fun. But from certain angles they looked like giant rats coming out from the rocks at you which was a good reminder that they were wild animals.

Forts walk - named so because there are remnants of a fort at the top of the hike. But most people (like us) do it because it's the best spot on the island to find wild koalas. We saw two! For some reason seeing them in the wild is much more exciting than in captivity.

Oh, there was a nice view of Horseshoe Bay as well:

My last day on Maggie was spent finally taking advantage of the trails around the island. You can easily walk to other bays to find nicer and/or more secluded spots. It was also incredibly humid that day, so even the quick 3km round trip was a bit of a challenge with the hills. It was worth it though. I trudged through the mugginess to spend some time at Radical Bay, which was beautiful.