16 July 2011 - Black River Stadium, Queensland

The morning broke sunny and dry, and there was much noisy activity over at the rodeo stadium. A large truck with a cherry picker was back on the job, with men rewiring the network to meet recently updated standards, all for the sake of the one annual rodeo. The days are ticking down for the organizers and so Saturday was no excuse for idleness.

The great pools of water had disappeared leaving a brown scum-like covering from the grass clippings. Our awning area had escaped the flooding unlike most of our fellow campers who were out early lifting their awning “floors” and hanging them over the rodeo rails to dry and generally littering their sites with other sundry items out to dry in the welcome sunshine.

The day for us, given the dodgy weather forecast, was earmarked for museums and the like. We were out on the road toward the city, me behind the wheel and the lunch in the eski, soon parked along the Strand and making our way into Reef HQ.

This is the world’s largest living coral reef aquarium with 130 coral species, 120 fish species and hundreds of species of sea stars, sea urchins, snails, worms and sponges. It was opened in 1967 so has been around a while; although I am sure it has been upgraded and expanded since the original opening. Having spent more than five years living in the islands enjoying coral seas, I have to admit I was a bit ho-hum about this being on our must-do list. How wrong could I have been! This aquarium is just so wonderful, so fabulous, it should be on the must-do list for anyone who comes within a thousand kilometres of Townsville! We arrived at 10.30 am and did not leave until 3.30 pm, taking a short break to retreat to the cruiser to rescue our picnic lunch, and then we could have spent longer there.

We were fortunate enough to be there to do the tour to the Turtle Hospital, where rescued Green Turtles are nursed and rehabilitated. There were nine turtles in care and all had sad stories and all were at different stages of recovery. That was very interesting.

At 2.00 pm we joined the feeding tour and watched the staff feed crocodiles, turtles, sharks, octopus, reef fish and a multitude of others being fed with supplements to that taken naturally from the water they live in.

We had intended to fit the Reef HQ into the morning and the Museum of North Queensland into the afternoon, however we will obviously have to do the latter on another day.

We have yet to receive word of the shower waste part, so it looks like we will be here for a while yet. This is not a problem as there is so much still to do and see, not least of all, to call on Danielle before she is rushed to hospital to be delivered of her baby.