The Sunshine Coast wasn’t so sunshiny today! Rain, rain, and more rain! We had planned to take the 20-minute ferry across Cleveland Bay to Magnetic Island, as our friend Stella in Sydney had recommended. But it rained, and thunderstorms were predicted, so we stayed on the mainland. But we took a photo of the Magnetic House! Actually, Magnetic Island was named because Captain James Cook’s instruments acted funny around Magnetic Island, and he and the crew thought it was due to a magnetic effect. They were wrong…it was just a navigation error, but the name has endured.
Photos are from The Strand, the street that runs along the ocean, filled with gardens and beach entries; from the ship, showing the breakwater that is unusual in that it makes a 90-degree angle; the gazebo in ANZAC Park (named in honor of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps soldiers of World War I…we encountered many ANZAC memorials in both countries); a giant spider hovering over the street in front of a children’s museum; some glorious flowers; two old buildings that are still beautiful today; and our final, head-scratching photo of a…….well, we don’t know. We laugh every time we look at it, and it truly can only be called bizarre. That’s Townsville!
