Skip to navigation

Mark Moxon's Travel Writing

Australia: Magnetic Island

Arthur Bay
Arthur Bay is just one of the many idyllic bays on Magnetic Island

Magnetic Island is just 20 minutes away from Townsville on the ferry, and it's a holiday spot par excellence. It's a smallish island, roughly triangular with each side about 10km long, and about 75 per cent of it is National Park. The easiest aspect of it, though – as far as recuperating flu victims are concerned – is that it's set up perfectly for tourists, and the packages to get you over to the island and staying in one of the many hostels are very cheap, readily available, and hassle-free. So, for A$59 I got a return ticket to the island and five nights in Centaur House, a quiet and friendly place halfway up the east coast in a village called Arcadia. It was spot on.

Toad Racing

A wallaby on Magnetic Island
A wallaby on Magnetic Island

A great way not to get better is to drink beer, but a strange thing happened on my first night on the island. The local pub was having a toad racing night (as you do), and a group of us from the hostel went along to participate, after putting together a kitty to bet on the toads (I ended up putting in the princely sum of A$1). The ringmaster, for want of a better name, had a personality that was larger than life, not to mention a belly that in most civilisations would be classed as gross, but which in Australia would be classed as an investment; watching him introduce the toads was fun in itself. The Centaur House syndicate bet on the yellow toad in the second race – yellow being the colour of the ribbon round the toad's neck – which we had to secure by bidding the highest amount for that toad, and we sat down and waited for the race to start.

Florence Bay
Florence Bay

Kicking Back

A sleeping koala
A koala taking a welcome forty winks in a shady gum tree at the Forts

It continued well, too. Magnetic Island lives up to its name in that people come to stay and never want to leave, but the reasons are less hedonistic than in places like Cairns; if you pick the right hostel, as I managed to in Centaur House, the pace of life becomes procrastinatingly attractive, with the most difficult decision of the day being whether to have toast or cereal for breakfast. Walking round the island with the other hostellers was relaxing, stopping at different bays every day and soaking up rays in the likes of Arthur Bay, Florence Bay, Radical Bay, Horseshoe Bay and Alma Bay. There were highlights, like the Forts – where we spotted 13 koalas, one of them with a baby – and the sounds of chuckling kookaburras and screaming curlews serenading us to sleep, all of which made Magnetic Island one of the most relaxed spots I have yet found.

The Forts and Horseshoe Bay
The Forts and Horseshoe Bay