By the numbers
16.51 kms
21756 steps
Last night I had changed my mind about visiting Magnetic Island as I wanted to experience the Townsville show and that would mean appearing at the cemetery too, which was on the way. I did learn that Monday was show day, so though Sunday might be better. I was still going to have my tour to the quarantine station just up the road that is now part of the national park on the Monday. I made sure I had breakfast before leaving, although I did get distracted in wanting to finish the book I was reading.
The route I took was through town tracing the edges of Castle hill towards the outskirts of Townsville. I passed some of the artworks that were on the walls of a few businesses. On the way I stopped at the Townsville train station and it seems to be where they are building the track for the racing next weekend. A train had actually pulled in and was going to head north unless it changed direction somewhere further along the line. I could feed the day getting warmer and cloudless. It was unlike every other day I have been on my trip so far as there has been cloud cover. I was following the map on my phone so knew I was going. The West End cemetery was not very far from the show grounds and once I walked up, I thought the gate was closed meaning that it was not open. The cemetery had been opened around 1868 or there abouts, so I took a walk and kept finding information panels about the cemetery.
After wandering around the cemetery for a bit, I headed to the show grounds and found I had to pay for my ticket in cash, which I luckily had on me. I had to wear a mask inside the showgrounds and they even had to do a temperature check too. The temp gun didn’t work at first until the lady had to sort it out and then I was allowed in. I checked out the show bag area and was starting to think that I had seen better at the Ekka in Brisbane. I didn’t mind the mask, but in the heat it was annoying. While I would have liked showbags there was no space and I did not want to carry them around. I wandered around looking at the baby animals and the wood chop. There were some other displays like vehicles, but the whole event did not seem like it was busy, unless that is Monday. I didn’t try the rides and I was there for close to two hours before I left.
The walk back to town meant my plans were constantly changing as I first wanted to walk the 40 mins extra to the RAAF base, which turned into a walk to another nearby cemetery, the next change went to the end of The Strand where an old fort was. The last change ended up going back to the motel as I was feeling the draining effects of the constant sun. I didn’t realise it would get so hot up this way and once I made it back to the room I was feeling pretty exhausted and I did not have much in the way of water left. I ended up having a sleep for an hour with the aircon going in the room. I hadn’t realised that I had gotten sunburnt, so I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon inside and in the shade as I didn’t want to get burnt any more.
I was doing some research into what bus service I needed to catch and found because of the public holiday there was no public transport to where I wanted to go and I did not want to walk 2 hours one way and then return walk would be another 2 hours. I know where I want to head to tomorrow even if its an alternate plan to what I had. I wasn’t planning on the Townsville show day, but I will make do. Probably shouldn’t be spending the whole day in the sun with the sunburn I received today.
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