Day 27-30: Maggie Island

Monday morning I got up early and met my friend Yvonne at the ferry. Yvonne is the Irish girl who I was traveling around with in Cairns. She and I had been taking and I told her I was going to Maggie island for a few days and she said she was jealous so I told her to just join me, and she did. She took the bus down and met me in Townsville. 

It’s a quick ferry ride to Magnetic Island (Maggie), only 20 minutes. It was a beautiful day. As we landed we saw these cute little dinosaurs perked on the dock, which made me smile. 

We disembarked and wandered to find brunch, we ended up at this cute pirate themed restaurant which was really delicious. The whole place was decorated with pirate themes. It was shaped like a ship and you had a pirate flag on your food. It was very cute and delicious. 

Next we wandered to our hotel, and luckily, our room was ready even though it was only 9am. We settled a bit and had a chat with the lady at the front desk. She recommended resting until the later afternoon since it was already gotten so hot. We liked that idea and headed for the pool after running to the store for some snacks. We spent the day lounging by the pool and watching corny holiday movies before heading out to get some fish and chips and search for rock wallabies. 

To get to the rock wallabies we took those motor scooters, and it was an adventure. First Yvonne had never used one so it took a bit of training for her to get a hang of it. Then we got to the spot and we left the “scooter zone” and our scooters shut down and even when we dragged them back they wouldn’t start up again. We dragged them for probably 200 yards before we realized that there was a button on the app you had to press for them to work again. Then we tried to park them so we could look at the wallabies, but you can only park them in designated areas. We had to go half a mile back to find a parking area. It was a bit of a journey, lol, but it worked out in the end. 

Rock wallabies hang out along the water on the rock breakers that protect the docks. They are about a foot tall and skittish, but also very curious. They will sit and stare at you, they are very cute. 

We scootered home afterwords and went to bed, knowing we were going to get up early the next morning. 

We woke up at 5am on Tuesday so we could go grab the bus and try to find some wild koalas. We grabbed the bus and coffees and headed to the “Forts”. An old military lookout that has been converted into a hiking area. It’s known to be the best place to find wild koalas on Maggie. The home was stunning going to the peak of the mountain and then working our way down along the different beaches. We didn’t find any wild koalas unfortunately, but the home was so worth it. We did have a fair share of misadventures though. 

Starting with Yvonne realizing she forgot her water bottle 2 km into the hike… we then looked at the map and thought “okay, no problem, we will just go 1.5km further to the road we see and catch the bus from there” (note we didn’t have cell service but we did have a map downloaded). Well, the road was not a road, and no bus came there. Now we were at the furthest point from either road, oh and I realize I forgot the snacks (clearly packing at 5am didn’t work for us). We decided to continue on, since going back was certainly more uphill, and the way other way was new and flat and not any further. It was gorgeous. We didn’t see a single other person the entire second half of the way. I would have appreciated it more with food and water, but we did okay, learning we need to check out bags better in the mornings. It was stunning though and I’d 100% do it again. We got to the other end of the trail and immediately ended up at a cafe where we got breakfast wraps and smoothies and we were very happy. 

Hot and tired we headed back to the hotel for a nap and a swim through the heat of the day. The place we were staying was really nice, it’s a bit out of the way, but backs up to the National park so we had tons of wallabies and cockatoos (Black and sulfur crested), kukaburras, kites, ibis, curlews, etc all over the place. It was also so quiet with barely any other visitors so we had the entire place to ourselves.

 It was really really nice. 

In the afternoon we went to the bbq are a had a cider and cooked up some veggie burgers and ate while watching the sulfur crested cockatoos have a lunch of their own. They were very unsure of us at first, but we stood there a while watching them and they realized we weren’t a threat and started to ignore us a bit. They are cute birds. 

In the evening we headed to Picnic Bay and got ourselves some cocktails and pizza and watched the sunset over the ocean. It was a beautiful day. 

Wednesday we headed back to the forts to try again to see the wild koalas. Once again we had no luck, unfortunately, but we only did 2 km walking so it wasn’t bad and we were prepared this time. After that we returned to the hotel and lounged by the pool listening to music and resting before it was time to head back to the ferry in the afternoon. We rode back and spent a few hours wandering around Townsville before she had to catch her bus back to Cairns. It was a really wonderful trip.