Townsville
“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.”
— Charles M. Schulz
Sugar cane to the right of me and bananas to the left. Sugar cane to the left and bananas to the right. For hours of driving — with many more still to come — this was the landscape. It wasn’t boring at all; to a Canadian boy it was exotic and exciting. Unfortunately, I was also beginning to discover the gastronomic consequences of stopping at too many roadside fruit stands and eating ridiculous quantities of mangoes, pawpaws and rockmelons.
I was pretty nervous arriving in Townsville. This was the first large Australian city I’d attempted to navigate while driving on the left, and it was also my first encounter with the dreaded ROUNDABOUT. One of the perils of travelling and driving alone is having nobody in the passenger seat to read the map, so finding the hostel became an adventure of its own. Around this point in the trip I also had the sudden realization that I really was alone in a foreign country. I’d already seen some amazing things, but after all those beaches, rainforests and endless roads, I was looking forward to a little city life.
Townsville was really supposed to be just a stopover before heading to Magnetic Island, but it turned out to be considerably more entertaining. The pictures are sparse partly because I decided to give the camera a rest and partly because there was a great need to have a few ales. My hostel mates were three young Germans from Cologne, and one night we headed downtown to the Mad Cow. At some point one of the Germans managed to get himself arrested, which meant the rest of us ended up at the watch house helping get him out of jail. Oh, what a night. Oh… yeah. I remember now. I was supposed to be here so I could go hiking on Maggie.
