May 2 Airlie Beach to Townsville

We enjoyed our last breakfast at “Paradise Found” with Margaret and Alan prior to lugging all extra luggage (left here days prior) and the entire usual bags down to the car.  Margaret had given us fresh bread, boiled eggs and tomatoes to make lunch as well as filling our water bottle with fresh rain water (YUM).  We were very well prepared for the day.  We couldn’t express our thanks enough for their hospitality and we hope we can repay them when they next travel to WA.

Avenger & Mini Pitts nose to nose

Arriving at the Whitsunday airport we saw the Grummen Avenger and Pitts Special mini parked nose-to-nose having a conversation.  A few aeroplanes were still to depart and there was parachutists dropping as well as a chipmunk completing joy local rides.

After re-fuelling the Stinson and loading the equipment we were finally prepared for departure.  The entire journey was to only take 65 minutes.  A Nanchang, the Avenger and Pitts all gave us quite a show as they departed.  It was almost as good as the previous day’s airshow.

Lifting off the curved runway we climbed out over the bay showing more still and clearer waters than the previous day.  It would have been lovely to snorkel again.  Circling back around in front of the beach and town we took photos of the lovely sight.  Turning north up the coast we said goodbye to lovely Airlie and the Jarretts.

The short flight ended with the vast sight of Townsville and its airport.  It’s a military base as well as having a population of 165,000.  Requesting runway 07 due to a 10+ knot crosswind on duty runway 01, we landed easily, taxied to the GA area and were very quickly shown a place to park.

After some mucking around we found ourselves a hire car from Meteor Rentals – a beaut little yellow Getz and booked ourselves into a cabin at the Coral Coast Caravan Park.

We took a drive along the city foreshore with all its restaurants spilling onto the walkways and saw 100’s of people walking.  We also watched children in a spectacular water playground which had many varieties of wet fun. 

Townsville lookout

 Following our map we wound our way to the lookout mountain.  The road was almost impassable due to the 100’s of joggers going up to the top.  It was obviously a very popular walk/jog track.  At the top the views were stunning in 360 degrees.

As the sun set we headed back to the CP and fell asleep immediately after dinner.