A city known for its big military base
Townsville is a city on the north-eastern coast of Queensland, Australia with around 180,000 inhabitants. It enjoys an average of 320 days of sunshine a year and is in the dry tropics region of Queensland The Port of Townsville allows larger cargo ships from Asia and the world's largest passenger ships to visit.
My trip to Townsville from Mission Beach lasted about 3 hours. A town which is known in Australia mainly as a military base. Townsville has a lively, young population, with thousands of students and armed forces members.
In the dark I reached the Civic Guesthouse. The owners were kind enough to give me a 2-bed room, although I had actually booked a bed in the 6-bed dormitory. I quickly went to the supermarket, because the next day all shops should be closed because of Anzac Day, when Australians commemorate their victims of the two world wars.
Stations to put on sun cream
On this particular day, even the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison stayed in the city to praise the heroism of the soldiers at a memorial march. Unfortunately I missed the march, because it had already started in the early morning hours. There are not many attractions in Townsville. I took a long walk along the park that runs parallel to the coast. Swimming is not possible in most places because of the many highly poisonous cube jellyfish. But Townsville offers like many other Australian coastal towns a public pool or a net in the sea where you can swim. The city also set up sun cream stations where everyone can take some sun cream to protect themselves from the sun.
Walking up Castle Hill
The city is dominated by Castle Hill, a pink granite monolith that I climbed in the afternoon. It rises to a height of some 286 metres. There are many different routes to the top, by road or the so called Goat Track (which I also took). The Goat Track consists of 758 individual stairs from start to finish where countless fit joggers were passing by me. Running up this mountain in this heat ... all respect! From the mountain you have a great view to the city and also to the big island Magnetic Island, to which I took the ferry the next day.
