Blisters in Townsville!

Monday 15 June… First day to have a good look at Townsville and so we wait until after the rush hour before venturing into town. It’s a long time since we drove in such heavy traffic and it’s testing the Navigators skills not to mention Peter’s patience! We park south of the town across the estuary bridge cos it’s all day parking for free, then walked up into town. In fact we ended up walking all day and don’t we know it this evening! We called in at a dive shop and booked a 3 hour refresher course for Thursday. They have a deep tank specifically for training and as we haven’t dived for nearly 2 years we thought it best to go through the basics again. After booking our course we set off on our hike. Townsville has a lovely town beach and promenade called the Strand. We walked from one end to the other stopping at the far end for lunch (calamari, and fish and chips.) The beach has designated safe areas free from stingers and other nasties that swim around here, and there are surf lifesavers on duty also. The water temp is 23 degrees and the air temp during the day peaks at 27 with a bit of humidity. Perfect drinking weather so we make a pit stop at Molly Malone’s Irish Pub on the way back to the van.
We knew when we booked into this camp that there was an airport nearby, what we didn’t realise was that it’s an R A A F base with jet fighter planes and helicopters taking of and landing at regular intervals. The noise from the jets is incredible! They obviously don’t work on Sundays as it was quiet yesterday. Hopefully they don’t do it all day everyday as we plan to be here for a while.