Magnetic Island, Australia

 

Townsville is on the western side of Australia.  This is the start of the Great Barrier Reef which is more like a passage between islands you can see above the water and reefs below the water.  This is where the ship is required to take on a specialty pilot whose job it is to guide a ship through the intricacies of the reef.  

Our excursion choice was to take a ferry to Magnetic Island from Townsville.  Lt. Cook, yes, the young man who eventually became Capt. Cook, named this island because he was sure something on this island was messing with his compass.  Not true, but the name stuck.  

Today it is mostly a National Park with Mount Cook in the dead center.  The British were as eager as the Americans to attach their names to places which already had names for thousands of years.  

Basically, we did a bus tour of the island because we were looking forward to getting up close and personal with koalas.  Just our luck, the koalas were sick, and we couldn’t visit them.  I’m glad we went to the Toronga Zoo in Sydney to see koalas.  Koalas are actually very shy in the wild, and they are hard to spot.  

On the plus side of the Magnetic Island excursion, we did get to see Rock Wallabies, and as a bonus, saw joeys in situ (in the pouch).  These animals hop like kangaroos, but are much smaller.  They were as tall as around your knee.

Since I can’t get a multiple picture ‘link’, here are some rock wallaby pictures.

Our tour guide brought sanctioned food, so we were surrounded!

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0a8lb3VmiwEGva18gKDOWp2UQ

(The above link is supposed to be a video, but I don’t know whether it will work or not.)

On to more pictures:

Notice the joey peeking out?  It is about 6-7 months old.  They start leaving the pouch at about 9 months old, but stay close to mom and dive back in for warmth or if they feel they are in danger.

The moms ate all the treats - carrots were the favorites.

We landed at Nelly Bay, a very small settlement on the fringe of the National Park.  The island is very hilly.  Mount Cook is a shade under 1500 feet high.

There were also interesting birds on the island.  It’s hard to get pictures, but this curlew was posing.

I also took pictures of some trees and plants on Magnetic Island

This is a beach vitex and was a sand holder all along the shore line.

This is a flowering evergreen.  Its common name is horsetail tree, and it’s a beach tree.

The beaches on Magnetic Island and the coastline of Townsville are sea turtle hatching sites.  These are sacred animals to the First People, and all Australians protect hatching sites.

The tall trees are ‘gum’ trees which is what all Australians call eucalyptus trees.  There are 900 varieties of gum trees spread over Australia.

There are huge gray granite boulders all over Magnetic Island.  Norwegian pines were introduced here, and the climate must be perfect because they are huge.

Back to Townsville (ship dock), and the harbor.

And, we’ll finish up with Drake

https://photos.app.goo.gl/xFR4a4zhQ417QdBo8