Magnetic Island

What can I say about Magnetic "Maggie" Island? I have mixed feelings about the place. First off, we got swindled. So a "swindled" undercurrent was running through my brain most of the time I was on the island. When Paul and I decided to get a bit aggressive with our bookings in Australia we headed to a "backpackers booking agency" in Coogee beach called Base X Backpackers. We met Sarah who was very sweet and did a good job of helping us outline our itinerary. After all of Paul and my own back and forth about where to go, what to do, how much to spend, and on and on and on… (yes it can only be compared to being married) we FINALLY decided to pull the trigger on the before blogged about Whitsunday trip. Along the way we were swindled, YES SWINDLED into a nice three night stopover on Maggie Island off the coast of Townsville. Sarah "hooked" us up with three wonderful nights at Base X backpackers which included (yes this was the kicker that we fell for) one FREE dinner, one FREE breakfast, free snorkel hire and a free evening drink.

So what actually happened when we got there? First of all we're a bit thick b/c we didn't really do our own research to find out that this beautiful tropical island that looks so enticing for snorkeling, surfing and sunbathing happens to be unable to handle any of the above fun actives in the season we went. You see… at this time of the year it is 90+ degrees Fahrenheit with 87% + humidity. As many of you know my body is built as a grizzly bear ready for hibernation so this was a bit tough for me. But WAIT it gets better. The hostel we booked into is the only hostel on the island WITHOUT A/C!! Yup, imagine that as I'm sleeping in a pool of sweat my first night! THEN to make it worse the bugs are horrible and it is STINGER SEASON in the north so you can't even swim in the ocean! Dawn, Chris, Paul and I decided to do what any reasonable backpacker would do in this situation. IMPROVISE! (have you had enough caps lock yet?)

And thus we all put on our board shorts and walked 20 mins down the road to the local liqueur store. Upon arrival we spent about 15 minutes in the cooler section debating which beer to drink. This was part b/c we couldn't decided but mostly b/c we didn't want to get out of the huge refrigerator. We all came out of the refrigerator with big smiles on our face and rock hard nipples. (TMI but it was hilarious at the moment).

The guy at the counter suggested we go steal an esky which is what Brits call a cooler. We headed to the back of the supermarket and found the left over coolers from veggies being shipped from the main land. This was our saving grace as we filled it with ice ($5!! what a rip!) and beer ($50 for 24 bottle - SERIOUSLY!). Our luck continued as we walked past the only real restaurant near our hostel and it happened to be open that night. They served pizza or pasta so choice was limited and the BYOB fee was $3 per person! Can you see how we're getting screwed at every angle on this excursion?

Never-the-less we forged on and split four large pizzas over the next six hours and each drank a six-pack. It was one of the most fun, sweaty, humid and hilarious nights I've had in a long time. We were so keen on our esky that I decided to carry it all the way back to the hostel on the side of the road. What a sight!

The second day we rented a car. She was a 4x4. Our "Suzuiki Jimmy" 4x4 was our escape to go explore the island as a foursome. Thankfully this was the part of the trip where things got a bit better. We had A/C in the car and the weather broke slightly, down to about 85 degrees. That day we headed around the island from beach to beach and did some walking to explore.

That night we went back for our "free dinner" and of course found it to be a burger. The free drink was "jungle juice." Of course I have a lot of past experiences with vats of jungle juice so I passed my free drink onto Dawn who most humbly accepted. The snorkel hire was for about four hours so we skipped it all together and upon sleeping in pure humidity for one more night we all promptly declared the next morning we needed to get off the island ASAP. That morning we did a hike up to an old WWII look-out post and along the way saw two koalas. The two koalas were definitely a highlight for us even if I did sweat out about two gallons of beer/water mixture on the hike.

Its interesting to view WWII from Australias vantage point. After supporting mother england (even though they were independent nations) through WWI the ANZAC (Australia & NZ forces) all went to fight for her again in WWII. The forces ended up fighting in Gallipoli. It was really fun discussing this history with Chris who is from the UK. Each country really does have its own way of painting a war and its outcome. The NZ & Australians got their butts kicked but back home the message was that the Aussie and Kiwi troops had fought very gallantly and held their own.