Stephens Family Vacation - Australia 2025
The Strand at Townsville
Today I’m finally starting to feel better. Yay! Unfortunately the heat really affects me so I can’t do as much as I would like.
We spent most of the morning walking in Townsville, mostly along The Strand. Then we had lunch at the same pub again - the food is so good. |
|
Brent wanted to go for a short walk at dusk and I went along. I’m so glad I did! He saw scores of flying foxes in Palm Cove but I didn’t because I was sick. Tonight we saw a good couple dozen of them AND we heard a kookaburra twice! Yay! |
Magnetic Island - Horseshoe Bay
We took the ferry over to Magnetic Island today. Most of the island is a National park, and there’s a ton of wildlife there.
One interesting thing is that it’s the over-winter home of the Blue Tiger butterflies, which, like Monarchs, migrate. We are kind of early in the year for the butterflies but we did get to see a few early arrivals.
We also saw some enormous spiders, a kookaburra, a rock wallaby, and some flying foxes hanging in the trees. |
I thought I overheated yesterday when we went to Magnetic Island, but now I’m virusey again and I think I just pushed myself too hard yesterday and had a relapse. That’s mostly a good thing because yesterday should not have overheated me, and it made me think I’m not safe to spend any time at all in the heat. But now it looks like I just shouldn’t push myself too hard when I’m not yet over a virus.
Anyway, we went out super early this morning to beat the heat. We walked down to The Strand and had breakfast, and then had Second Coffee at the cool little Hoi Polloi cafe. Now I’m spending the rest of the day nursing my stupid virus. |
-
Hoi Polloi Coffee Shop
-
Brent at Hoi Polloi
Today is Anzac Day… sort of like Australian Remembrance Day.
We leave for Bowen this afternoon but we had time to go off to see the Anzac Day parade this morning. We enjoyed the procession of the various branches of the military, and the mini air show with the four military helicopters was a pleasant surprise.
We’re now having lunch while we wait to catch the train to Bowen. |
Sunrise Walk to Flagstaff Hill
The lady at the registration office of our hotel recommended a sunrise walk to Flagstaff Hill, so we did that this morning. It was great! There were quite a bit of mosquitoes, which is new… there haven’t been very many so far on this trip. |
Mullers Lagoon
A little ways north of our hotel there’s a place called Mullers Lagoon. We took a walk up there after breakfast. We saw sooo many birds, including three parrots. We also saw a lot of friendly turtles in the creek - we figure they’re used to being fed because they all scrambled over to us when we showed up.
There’s a butcher shop in town that advertises ‘chicken frames’. We think they mean carcasses for making soup, but I just liked the ‘frames’. Aussies are weird. I like it. |
Bowen - Summergarden Cinema
Brent chose to stop in Bowen because it was described as a town that time forgot. It is definitely a ‘small-town of old’ feeling place, especially their Summergarden Cinema. We walked from our hotel up to the theater this morning to catch the 10:00 showing of The Correspondent and the theatre did NOT disappoint. It’s a beauty. |
|
We got into Rockhampton (“Rocky” to the locals) late last night and walked to our motel. This morning we did a desperately needed load of laundry and then walked around town. They have a really nice little downtown area, a beautiful ‘customs house’ building, some nice parks and a lovely little Catholic Church. Brent found his barber, Darryl, but I want to know… where’s his other barber Darryl? |
Today we walked over to the Botanic Gardens and Zoo, both of which were free to visit. The gardens were beautiful and had so many birds, including kookaburras, and we were treated to a couple of choruses from them. At the little tea house we watched a mob of brazen parrots try to steal a guy’s lunch.
Afterwards we went over to Allie’s (Allenstown Hotel) for lunch and I had the meat pie mountain that I enviously watched a guy eat last night. |
Our trip is winding down. Today we’re taking the Tilt Train from Rockhampton to our second-last stop, Hervey Bay. The scenery is more interesting than the scenery on our other legs of the journey.
We looked up why it’s called a tilt train. Here’s what the Google AI had to say: A train is called a "tilt train" because its carriages are designed to tilt inward on curves, counteracting the centrifugal force that pushes passengers outward. This allows the train to travel faster on existing tracks with tighter curves than conventional trains. |
-
Brent & Rhonda on the Train
-
View from the Train
|
We’re staying at Hervey Bay, which has a number of beach towns running one into another. We’re staying at Pialba, and from there the Esplanade runs north to Urangan where there’s a 1km jetty. We spent a good part of the day walking up and back, seeing what we could see. The people have been really friendly, so we also spent a good part of the day talking with folks. I think this is the closest thing to a Brent Paradise as there is. |
< 1 2 3 >
