I’d heard good things about what appeared to be the only hostel in town, so I called them and asked if there was a shuttle. The man said ‘it’s only 500 metres’. Well! I’m not usually one to be lazy, but as a backpacker you accumulate things like industrial sized sun cream, insect repellent, Tupperware tubs and food. I can walk a good kilometre in humidity with all this but I prefer not to! Anyway, I walked there and the man wasn’t welcoming in the slightest and said the only dorm room left was sharing with one man. It had been the warmest day I’d felt for a long while and I was sad to leave Maggie and totally knackered so this was the last thing I needed. So I called a taxi and splashed out on my own room at a really quaint guest house where I had my own TV, air con, an immaculate kitchen all to myself, and wifi. I didn’t care – I had an overnight bus the following day so I would be saving money on accommodation anyway. And the proprietor was so nice, he let me use all the facilities all the next day – even keeping my room! So I was well fed and showered before getting on my bus at 7pm. It’s well worth pretending not to be a backpacker from time to time! Especially in weird places like Townsville.
Townsville doesn’t seem to be doing very well. Every other shop is closed. It looks like your average British High Street really. I visited a couple of shops. Shops are now frankly as much of a novelty as TV, the internet and normal food! It’s a weird old life on the road. Anyway, my new-found interest in the sea tempted me to pay the huge entrance fee to Reef HQ, the world’s largest coral reef aquarium. It was pretty decent. I went to the talk about turtles and looked round the turtle hospital. I went to the talk about predators and felt some shark teeth and other scary products of the sea, I watched feeding time, stroked some starfish, and learnt about cool looking things like pipe fish, and my favourite, the saw fish. However, there are more volunteers than there are tourists and they are incredibly helpful and full of interesting information, but they obviously don’t have that many people to talk to in the day…if you catch my drift. It was sometimes difficult to enjoy the exhibitions in a world of your own thoughts.
But one of them did introduce me to Nemo. The ACTUAL Nemo that the film producers had seen before producing the film. Apparently. So I found Nemo. There’s an achievement for the day if nothing else!
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