Holiday on an Australian Tropical Isle

(Last updated June 29, 2006)

While Jacob was off in Germany in his “Koalaman” costume and cheering on the Australian soccer team in the 2006 World Cup, Alma, Bill, Lisa, Tilly and Eleanor jetted off to beautiful Magnetic Island, off the northern coast of Australia in the Coral Sea. It was just as lovely as last year, when we all went up there, but the weather was just a bit cooler this time. That didn’t bother us, however, and we delighted in the appropriately-named Alma Bay beach, just 75 meters from “Lemonade,” the holiday house we rented for the week. There’s very little to report because we relaxed on the beach and ate out every night. End of story. On the way back we stopped off in Townsville, where Tilly and Eleanor frolicked in a terrific water park.

By the way, if you are wondering how Magnetic Island got its name, it was charted in 1770 by Captain James Cook, who allegedly discovered Australia (actually Portuguese explorers probably were the first Europeans to discover Australia about 40,000 years after the aborigines were making beautiful paintings in caves). The compass on Cook’s ship, the Endeavor, went funny and he wrongly assumed the island was magnetic.

Here are the pictures, most of them not really requiring captions because there isn’t any discernible activity depicted.

Magnetic Island, off Townsville, Queensland. Alma Bay is where we stayed during our visits—a lovely, quiet little beach (Photo: magvac.com)

Alma keeps Eleanor busy on flight up…….

…while Tilly and Mum chill out

Alma and Bill on ferry to Maggie

Eleanor frolics on the beach at Alma Bay

Tilly with her winning smile

Bill pondering huge number of sand grains

Rainbow lorikeets begging for food

Tilly and little sister at a restaurant

Alma and Bill get tucked into dinner

Tilly hopscotching at West Point beach

Looking over Alma Bay beach

Lisa, Eleanor and Tilly at dinner

Tilly with more lorikeet friends

Alma getting in some sketching

Does this photo need a caption? No, but I’ve got to fill up this space, so I’ll do it by telling you that there are about six or eight lovely little bays on Magnetic Island, which consists mostly of protected national seashore. The island is amazingly under-developed for such an idyllic place, but in Nelly Bay a huge marina-condominium project is underway. We hope it’s not the beginning of something bad! We’ve seen too many Shangri-Las ruined already.

Bill tuning in and tuning out at same time

Eleanor fascinated by guy with metal detector making the same mistake Capt. Cook did in 1770. There were two old coots on the beach with metal detectors, and because I felt sorry for them because of their inability to find anything I “seeded” the beach with a couple of 50-cent pieces when they weren’t looking. We waited breathlessly as they approached the planted money, but both times they walked right over the coins without detecting anything. I’d hate to be trying to escape a minefield with these two guys!