Townsville Photo Gallery

Catching up from last week's trip to Tropical Queensland:

Taking advantage of unlimited kilometers on the rental car, we decided to spend Saturday afternoon exploring the Townsville surrounds. The urban center is actually the composite of two sister cities, Townsville and Thuringowa. The current tourist campaign is "Discover Thuringowa" and most brochures feature inviting photos of a mossy arched stone bridge spanning Little Crystal Creek Falls, a popular swimming spot. Having always wanted to swim beneath a waterfall, we set out for Central Thuringowa.

After much circling through a maze of strip malls and dubious looking housing tracts, we finally realized that Crystal Creek Falls lies just outside the rain forest village of Paluma, 80 km to the North of Central Thuringowa. In the interim, we did discover a hoard of tiny tree frogs along the edge of a rather odiferous reservoir formed by the Ross River.

An abrupt mountain range frames the coast of Northern Queensland's beaches, providing a stunning backdrop and a natural catchment for the abundant tropical rains. Thus, nestled among the tops of these ranges are beautiful pockets of lush rain forest. After an expensive and unappetizing lunch at the only restaurant in Paluma (no wonder Australians are such good picnickers), we hiked 3 km beneath a dense canopy filled with strange bird calls and lined with interpretive signs that might have been written by Mrs Petersons's Kindergarten Class along the ridge to the Witt Lookout and were rewarded with this striking view of Big Crystal Creek winding its way to the Pacific:

Halfway down the twisting mountain road, we stopped at the picnic area beside the mossy rock bridge, which had somehow become known as "my bridge", as if I was obsessed with finding it - which I was - to have a swim in the delicious rock pools beneath Little Crystal Creek Falls. Oddly, the parking lot was just beyond a sign welcoming us to the City of Thuringowa.

I am often simply flabbergasted by the amenities provided to make such amazing places so accessible to the general public in Australia. It is one area where the US almost always falls short, and I often wonder if it is just a matter of sheer numbers of people or if there is some shortcoming in our national personality that makes it impossible to keep clean functional toilet facilities in remote locations. Steep cement staircases lead away from the lavish picnic grounds on either side of my arched bridge. Groups of Tongan families (damn they are big people), teenagers, and gossiping old crones congregated in the cool pools of sparkling water that cascaded over smooth boulders. Young men scampered fearlessly up rock walls and leaped from dizzying heights into the deep green water, so confident in their immortality and in their ability to heal from any injury. As Kevin and I gingerly picked our way through the maze of stone and water, we came to realize just how scarred our spirits still are from his single misstep on a cement staircase in Mexico. We were only too aware of just how far we were from the nearest hospital. We watched the kids hopping from rock to rock with a stab of regret for our own lost days of fearlessness.

But we swallowed our fears and plunged into the wonderfully cool water. It felt like a baptism, a cleansing rebirth of sorts. I tried to swim beneath the plunge of the waterfall, but the force of the down pour matched my strength and pushed me back to the edge of the pool. We rewarded our bravery with a stop at The Frosty Mango for ice cream on the way home.

On Sunday morning, we perused the stalls of the public craft market along the Flinders Street open air mall, where we spent extravagant amounts of money on tropical fruit products. We bought pineapple wine, passion fruit wine, passion fruit butter, and mango wine. And we bought every odd and unusual tropical fruit we could find, including star fruit, dragon fruit, and Jack Fruit. (I don't want to hear any crap about linking to Wikipedia - they had the best pictures and EVERYONE knows that the information presented therein may or may not be wholly accurate and should merely serve as an introduction and a guide for further reading!)

The star fruit and the dragon fruit (both white and red) were slightly disappointing. Their texture was appealing, but they were a little short in the flavor department. But the Jack Fruit was an adventure worthy of a video. The one pictured above is on the small side. It only weighed about ten pounds. Most are about twice the size of your head. The leathery skin holds a fibrous collection of fleshy pods surrounding large slick seeds. The pods have the texture of an onion, but a very strong flavor that is a cross between banana and pineapple - sort of like juicy fruit gum. It had to be removed from the apartment after it was opened, as the smell soon became overwhelming.

I stayed on through Monday and enjoyed a lovely walk along The Strand to the Rock Pool. The Strand is a 3 km pathway along the beachfront, dotted with parks, exercise stations, water fountains, and of course, Anzac memorials. The walk culminates in a gigantic Rock Pool - an enormous enclosure by the ocean's edge filled with filtered sea water and patrolled by lifeguards - once again, serviced by extraordinary toilet and shower facilities.

Aside from being a safe and sheltered swimming enclosure, rock pools serve to protect the public from the swarms of deadly jelly fish that inhabit the waters of Queensland from November to May. There are two particularly nasty species, that according to informational signs along the beaches, if someone should fall victim to their sting, you are to apply vinegar to the site of the trauma, call for medical aid, and immediately begin administering CPR.

My friends and colleagues are a little bewildered by my enchantment with Townsville, though most have never been themselves. I reckon one of the things I like about it is that it is not particularly a tourist center. It is a place where a traveller might stop off for a few days on their way to somewhere else, but it is not in and of itself a vacation destination. Because it is a port town on the edge of the mining world (indeed, there are daily commercial flights departing the airport exclusively to the Century Mine, the Cannington Mine, and The Phosphate Hill Mine), Townsville has a distinct industrial flavor - and after visiting some shops in Central Turingowa, I suspect that there may be a fair amount of toxic mine dust polluting the water supply, as there seemed to be an inordinate number of serious birth defects. It is also a town laden with military bases, which explains the huge numbers of gigantic bars that are packed out until 5 am each weekend. But Townsville boasts some lovely public venues adorned with an abundance of quality street art. Below are two of my favorites.

These 'ant hills' were constructed from found objects collected by local school children.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to be, but to me it looks like a gigantic potato gun.

Whew, that was a long tedious post. If you're still reading - bless your heart! And, you'll be pleased to know we will be returning to Tropical Queensland in thee weeks time over the long Easter weekend, in search of still more pristine waterfalls, untasted exotic fruits, and, perhaps, the elusive platypus.