The Journey To Magnetic Island

It was time to leave Cairns and start heading South. By the way we were making our way to Sydney because that was where my flight was leaving from in about 11 days time. Our next destination was Townsville and then to an island called Magnetic Island. I can’t remember what my guidebook said about the island to make me want to go there but Yang didn’t seem to mind when I suggested it to him.

We were going to get from Cairns to Townsville by the Sunlander train. The journey takes eight hours and our train left at 8:30AM. For this long journey we needed snacks, so at midnight the night before me and Yang set out to find food for the morning. There wasn’t much open at that time, actually there was nothing except a 24-hour convenience store that we discovered. The great thing that happens when two guys travel together is that they are both happy to eat rubbish. Our food for the train turned out to be a packet of those yellow banana sweets, honey roasted peanuts and all this dumped together in a big packet of cornflakes that Yang had been eating for God knows how long.

The train was slow, really slow. It was so slow you felt like you could get off from the first carriage, stretch your legs, meet some of the locals and then get back on again at the last carriage. Here is a video of its slowness.

The view was mostly of sugar cane, farms and mountains

Sitting on the opposite seats to us was a four-year-old blonde girl and her father. The girl was at least 70% evil. When we first found our seats she was sitting in them till her dad got her to move back to him. Over the next eight hours she did not sleep at all, in fact she did not stop talking or even worse, signing. She seemed to be driven by an inexhaustible and unrelenting energy that she put into being expertly annoying. To be fair she didn’t have anything to do, not even a colouring book, so she was bored but oh God. Every twenty minutes her dad would tell her off by slapping her, which made her cry even louder and report accurately, “Everybody hates me. I don’t have any friends. You hate me too don’t you daddy?” At first I had sympathy for her, then for him and finally just for myself.

We eventually got off the train at Townsville. The next part of the plan was to walk from the station to the small ferry port. I had a map and we found the big main road that would take us there but we didn’t know if we should go left or right. Yang reached for the small golden bell he had dangling from his bag. I personally didn’t see how it was going to help. He turned the bell upside down and it turned to be a compass, which was much more useful.

So we walked, and walked and it was really hot. Then we realised we were pointlessly walking in the sunshine because the otherside of the road was much more in the shade. The next crossing over the road looked like it was a whole horizon away and anyway while I was looking for it Yang was already running over the road. He has a tendency to act like that, like writing, “Rubbish” in comments’ books and always trying to kill any strange insects that I point out.

We walked for a long time. Google maps had told me that it was just 15 minutes from the station to the ferry port. However, I realised that it must have meant 15 minutes if you are being carried by something with wheels and a tax disc.

The road turned into a shopping area and we stopped to rest near the mobile blood bank. Nothing interesting happened involving the mobile blood bank; it was just a point of reference. Oh actually it did have to reverse out, which took quite a lot of shouting. Be terrible if it crashed and spilled its load wouldn’t it. The driver would come out unharmed but completely covered in blood and stand shaking his head at the wreck. People would run over to him in panic, shrieking, “Are you alright!” The driver would look a little bemused and say, “Yeah, bit of a headache that’s all. Oh this!” indicating his blood drenched clothes, “No don’t worry, it’s not mine.”

So anyway. As we walked nearer to the little ferry terminal, which was a low grey building, I was reminded of the game Little Big Adventure (LBA). You see in LBA you have to walk to a little ferry terminal, which is sort of low and grey looking. In LBA though you don’t buy the ticket, that would be silly. Instead you have to help out a bipedal elephant whose distraught because he needs to arrange some boxes. You arrange the boxes for him and hey presto, he gives you a ferry ticket. We, however, bought our tickets from the counter marked, “Ferry Tickets” and then sat down.

Yang disappeared and then reappered with two cakes, quite a trick. One was chocolate and the other carrot. This was the first time he had ever eaten a carrot cake and he liked it. I told him that carrot cakes are the best vegetable based cake, in my opinion. Here is a pictures he took at that moment in time of someone else waiting for the ferry.

The ferry arrived and we climbed aboard. It was 5:25PM and the sun was beginning to set in a nice early evening light sort of way. Here are some pictures.

This is Yang and our bag of snacks.

Yang took about twenty pictures of me over the space of a minute. He deleted all but this one, which captures the exact moment that I thought I was going to drop my camera.

This was a cloud over Magnetic island.

When we arrived at Nelly Bay Ferry Terminal the cyclone warning sign was set to, “No Immediate Danger,” which was reassuring.

Since Magnetic Island is pretty small the website for the hostel we were staying in advised us just to say the name of the hostel to the bus driver, and he would be able to drop us off right outside. We bought the bus ticket from the place in between the two signs saying, “Bus tickets” which were pointing in opposite directions to each other. The bus ride took maybe twenty minutes and gave good views of the mixture of houses, trees and nothingness that lines the one main road of Magnetic Island.

Our hostel was called, “The Traveller’s Hideaway” and we chose it because it was the only one available – a big selling point. When we booked it the most recent review on the website popped up.

“STAY AWAY! Yuk FEMALE staff watch PORN(!!) with guests in the tv room and the whole place is dead and old. Miles from anything and decent beaches and shops.”

Well, we thought, at least there’s a TV.

When the bus stopped and the driver shouted the name of the hostel we climbed off and up the steps into the office. There was no one behind the counter but there was a sign telling us to call a number on the phone provided. I called it and a man said he would be there in a moment. We waited on the terrace outside for a few minutes and a woman in a bikini came up and said, “Hello” to us. She walked into the office and we carried on sitting outside. She popped her head back out again and said, “You want to check in?”

There was a problem with our reservation. It was explained to me the next day that the problem arose because I had booked the room as Nicholas but on checking in I wrote my name as Nick - well I was tired. The woman kept looking between the book and the computer and then phoned the man I had spoken to. A small argument took place and then she hung up and smiled at me saying, “It’s fine,” unconvincingly.

Our room was a three person one but there was no else there at the time. It had a sink, beds, air-conditioning and was relatively clean. The hostel had three showers per sex, not clean but not too bad. Well anyway, after a quick look around we went out to find some food.

“I’m the only Asian,” Yang said slightly sadly. It did seem to be the case, the bus ride had shown us that the vast majority of people seemed to be non Asian. The Internet had said there was a supermarket in Picnic Bay, which was where our hostel was, which closed at 7pm and it was about 6:30PM when we started looking for it. On the Esplanade was a row of restaurants and bars and then a small opening into a covered area between two buildings. Here was a sign proudly baring the name of the supermarket but which was hanging over a door with only darkness behind its window. There didn’t seem to be anything supermarket like near the sign so we decided that perhaps the sign wanted us to walk in its direction. We did, and came out at the back of the row of restaurants. We climbed over a small wall, walked passed the bins and came out again at the front of the restaurants with no supermarket in sight.

“We should ask someone,” suggested Yang. There were two women sitting drinking outside the nearest bar. I asked one of them if she knew where the supermarket was. It went like this.

ME “Excuse me, do you know where the supermarket is?”

A “Umm, no sorry.”

B “Yes you do, that guy told us. It closed down.”

ME and A: “Oh.”

A “You’re staying in the Traveller’s Hideaway aren’t you?”

ME “Uhh, yes.”

A “Well the place next door sells milk and pasta sauce, things like that.”

ME “Oh ok, thank you.”

You know you’re on a small island when people know where you live less than an hour after you actually moved in.

Near the supermarket sign was a Chinese restaurant. “Ha, you’re not the only Asian,” I said. To test this theory we ventured inside and had a meal. “Where are you from?” asked the Chinese lady serving us to Yang.

“Korea,” he said.

“Ahh,” she said. It wasn’t a great display of same continent familiarity.

The restaurant also sold milk, so we picked up a bottle of it for breakfast. Back at the hostel we stayed up late watching Black Books on Yang’s laptop, he has become obsessed with the show and often quotes it. Actually he learnt the word “rubbish” from episode 3 when Bernard says, “Listen to the rubbish in this book,” about the wine book he is reading. “Don’t drink Burgundy in a boat.”

Eventually it was time to sleep. From bed to bus to train to foot to boat to bus to bed.

My spellchecker says that last sentence should be fragmented. Go fragment yourself, I say.