Cuddly Koalas - Magnetic Island

When we were at home loosely planning this trip we intended to make our way down from Cairns to Sydney by public transport. Since the east coast is the busiest part of the country, with many hostels and most of the activities are or on the ocean, it seemed the most sensible option not the blow our money on expensive car or campervan hire. We just hadn't decided on bus or train yet.

The start of the Forts Walk

But when we got in our hostel in Cairns, we saw a sign for campervan relocations; basically you hire a van for $1 a day and even get money for petrol, but you have to get to the new location very quickly. We asked our receptionist about this deal, but it gave us only 3 days to get to Brisbane. We had planned to do that route in 2 weeks. Three days would be just driving and sleeping with no sightseeing on the way. She then offered to make a few quick enquiries to see what the prices were for renting a campervan, and we got a great deal: renting a Spaceship for $30 a day including full insurance! That meant we just had to pay the insurance fee. That's the same price as 2 bus tickets, plus we could save on accommodation costs. Monday morning we picked up a Spaceship named Nostromo, and drove to Townsville. 

First koala spotted!

Because we now had a campervan we opted for a day trip to Magnetic Island, instead of staying there overnight. After we got lunch at the supermarket, we drove to one of the two ferries and bought return tickets. And then came to the conclusion we had preferred to take the other ferry that went 18 times daily instead of 8... Well, nothing to be done about that now! 

We looked into the information leaflet and decided that we would bus around the island. Our main objective was to do the Forts walk, where it was rumoured you could very well spot wild koalas...

Sleepy face

Hat on, sunscreen applied, and off we went. And just after a few minutes we spotted our first koala up in a tree, neatly seated on a branch, nice fluffy ears and all!  After a few minutes of snapping photos we walked on, and just a few meters further was the second koala. We felt really lucky now. And the good thing about koalas, even the 'wild' ones, is that they hardly move. They just sit and doze, so playing paparazzo on them is real easy. The 'hard' part is that since they don't move, it's also really easy to walk past them.  Which we nearly did, when we saw a koala about 1 meter off the ground, probably just came down for a poop. 

Koala just 1 meter off the ground

Of course this was reason for a few close ups, and then... A tiny second head peekabooed around the side: she had a joey! How cool is that? Now that was really an unexpected treat. What was pretty strange is that the joey seemed really awake and alert, while the mother just appeared dozy. Though at a certain point mum did think all the attention (of course when we stopped to watch, so did a couple of other tourists) was a bit too much. When Rodie ran back for our water bottle, that we forgot in all our excitement, she had climbed up another tree. 

Just look at that face...

We walked back, in order to catch the bus back to one of the other bays to see the rock wallabies. When we arrived at Picnic Bay we clambered up the walking trail and had a wonderful view. But no wallabies. Odd. Now of course it's nature, so that can happen but still... When we walked back down I took another look into the leaflet, to discover that we were at the wrong bay! We should've gone to Arcadia Bay.  We considered taking the bus back there, but then opted out.  I'm sure we'll see lots of wallabies in the coming months and we had done quite some walking. We took the ferry back and drove our trusty Nostromo to the truck stop for a good nights sleep. 

View from the look out at Picnic Bay