August 13 Townsville

I think I’m in love with Townsville, but more about that later. Everything today went really well. I had the car at the repairer at 8.00 am and by 8.30 the NRMA had spoken to the repairer to check the car was going to be off the road for more than 24 hrs, contacted Thrifty and rung me back to tell me that a Ford Territory would be ready to pick up at 11 o’clock. I needn’t have worried about pigging out at Sizzlers last night – today’s exercise more than took care of that problem. It was a half hour walk from the repairer to our caravan park but then another 20 min from there to Thrifty. The Ford Territory has only done 2000 km and drives beautifully – storage cubby-holes everywhere!. I told mum we’ll buy one when we win Lotto. Then again maybe I could do a swap – one used Prado for a new Ford – sounds fair! While I was attending to car matters mum put through a couple of loads of washing. We also vacuumed the van and washed the floor so, for the moment, western Queensland dust has been defeated. *Have just spoken to the repairer and they found “fine particles” in the pan when they pulled it off and assume they’ve come from the torque converter. In the morning they’ll finish pulling it out and send it to Brisbane.* The caravan park we are staying in is very popular and I have to tell them on Friday morning whether we need to extend our booking – apparently our site is the next available vacancy. Then again, mum and I might decide to stay on a few days longer in any case. After I picked up the car we started exploring Townsville and began with The Strand. It is absolutely magnificent and if Wollongong’s Blue Mile ends up anything like the Strand it will be well worth while. It extends along the whole foreshore from Kissing Point to the Marina – at least 2 or 3 km long. It’s beautifully grassed with lots of palm and other trees, has lots of seating, BBQs, picnic shelters, two netted swimming enclosures (to keep out the stingers in summer). At the top end there’s an area called the Rock Pool but it’s much more than the names suggests. Manicured lawns slope down towards the pool - it just has to be seen to be believed. Hopefully the photos I post with this will convey an accurate picture. By the time we’d explored the Strand and had hot chips for lunch 2 hours had passed. We were allowed to have hot chips because of all the exercise we had walking along the Strand. In the centre of Townsville is a huge mountain/rock called Castle Hill. We drove to the top (2.9 km) and the view in all directions is just amazing. Today we’ve seen some of the best sporting facilities we’ve seen anywhere – leaves Wollongong for dead! The place is just so green – probably strikes us a bit more forcefully because of the arid, drought-affected country we’ve travelled through for the last five weeks. The nature strips along the main roads and streets all have underground sprinklers. I only have one complaint – the cold wind that’s blowing (and has been since we arrived in Mt Isa). It’s keeping things quite cool. It’ll need to warm up quite a bit before I’ll be tempted to go swimming. However as I write we’re at a pool and mum is doing some laps – the first chance she’s really had since we left home, apart from the frigid pool in the caravan part at Mt Isa.