One day at a time

Townsville 2007 Originally uploaded by PD Blog Pics . Townsville 2007 I have loaded the pictures from my trip up to my websites: Townsville Magnetic Island & Surrounds

Spend the morning sorting out the final things. The flight up went well, we got first row seats and I watched a video on Campbell's laptop on the flight up. Things took a slight turn for the worst when Campbell's bag didn't turn up; it was still in Melbourne, as it had lost its tag. Then the GPS got us a bit lost, although we found the hotel in the end and after driving around, we decided that Townsville must close very early, there was no supermarkets open and we only found one convenience store open!! Early to bed for us and lets hope Campbell's bag turns up tomorrow morning, as promised.

With the chances of Campbell's case turning up this morning virtually zero, we went shopping. We went to a couple of the shopping centres in and around Townsville. I still think that the Garmin GPS was better than the TomTom for accuracy, but I think that it is being let down by inaccurate maps. I bought a couple of things, one of which I had planned to buy. We spent the rest of the afternoon lazing by the pool and I used my goggles. They did the job that they were intended to do and I keep my contact lenses in my eyes. Finally Campbell's suitcase turned up this evening, still very much intact. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was a very pleasant experience

Walked into Townsville this morning along The Strand. We found a couple of the cafes that have been mentioned in the guides, but only one was open and even that one didn't have a working kitchen. We made do with coffee and cake, before continuing on into the city and after a short stop at the Information Centre, we wandered into the Mall. Unfortunately, this has definitely seen better days and it was surprising not to see a department store there. After the mall, we went to the aquarium and I took lots of pictures, there are a lot that will be deleted, but hopefully there will be some good ones in there. After a short rest back at the hotel, we went up Castle Hill and it is an amazing view up there. The drive down was slow, avoiding all the pedestrians. We went shopping at the Woolworths in the town centre, and then found Palmer Street, we choose one of the restaurants along there for dinner.

We went to Magnetic Island today. It's a very pretty place, but it looks like it is going the same way as Hamilton Island. There is a lot of building work going on at the harbour and lots of places are up for sale. Surprisingly most of the places were closed, the only ones opened appeared to be the pubs. We went to Horsehoe Bay and Picnic Bay. We walked up to Hawkins Lookout which had a great view back over to Townsville. Got bored in the afternoon, Campbell was reading for most of it. We went to Palmer Street for dinner again and found a great indian restaurant, which was mentioned in one of the guides. (We later found out that it's consider the best indian restaurant in the city!)

We went on the longest drive so far this trip to Charter Towers. It's a nice country town and reportly has the largest battery in Australia. Not that we saw it, when we realised it would cost $25 all up to see it, we decided against it - anyway we have seen the same thing at Sovereign Hills. Drove back into Townsville, to one of the shopping centres just outside the city centre. For dinner we went to the italian place on Palmer Street. It's strange that it would have become the main eatery street for the city when the Strand has far better views, but there are very few restuarants on the Strand. Townsville appears to have missed the boat on so many areas in relation to tourist or just simply developing the city. If it's not careful the centre will die and in fact there are already signs that this is happening in the Mall area.

We went on another long drive today to see the Welleman Falls near Ingham. On route we stopped off in Ingham and had a wander around the some of the stalls set up for the Australian-Italian Festival. I had some Cannoli for the first time and it was yum! The drive to the falls was interesting, with animals wandering over the road and un-tarmac bits, not forgetting the hair-raising hill climb section which was only wide enough for one car, but was supposed to cope with two way traffic - thankfully this was not high season and the traffic in both directions was very light. The falls were impressive, but we decided to forgo the 2 hour walk to the base. Didn't do that much in the evening, went out for pizza and ate it on the foreshore, then came back to watch a movie. We did make a stop at a Warehouse store and Campbell found a set of noise reducing headphones for $30, which actually work!

Its small & sexy - my ipaq is growing on me. Still need to get hold of some more applications for it, but getting there. Just watched the final of the Eurovision Song Contest on SBS, I would have enjoyed it more if Terry Wogan had shut up more often. I 'm glad Serbia won, at least it was a decent song.

This morning I realised that my trusty Dell pda was on it's last legs. The plug to charge the device would no longer fit and thus when this charge runs out there will be no way to recharge it. The hunt is on to find a replacement and I have plumped for the HP Ipaq RX4240. There were a couple of moments of weakness when I seriously thought about getting one with GPS built in, but then I will have a dedicated GPS device, when my current one is finally repaired or replaced. Fingers crossed I will be able to pick one up tomorrow and I can then set it up over the weekend, ready for my trip away.

Took my GPS nav-sat back to the shop I bought it from today. Its stopped locking on to satellites, which makes it virtually useless. It couldn't have picked a worse time, since I was planning to use it on my trip in a weeks time.