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Sailing around Australian East Coast  Sydney — Cairns — Sydney , July-December 2007

Magnetic Island

 

04.10.2007

We arrived to Magnetic Island, which became one of my favourite tropical islands.

It is a 52 km˛ mountainous island which has effectively become a suburb of Townsville having around 2,000 permanent residents. It is also half national park with excellent rainforest walks. It is spring and there are flowers everywhere.

At present many millions of dollars in development are planned for the Island and the impact of these has led to considerable opposition from some residents who fear the effects this development will have on the environmental values of Magnetic's lowlands which are not protected by the national park.

The name of the island came about because of the apparent "magnetic" effect it had on the ship's compass of Captain Cook as he passed the island when sailing up the east coast of Australia in 1770. People have since explored the general area of Magnetic Island with various instruments to discover whatever it was magnetic like Cook experienced, but nothing has been discovered. (I read this in Wikipedia).

We spent 4 days anchored in Horseshoe Bay, 2 of which we took to explore the island (the other two days it was raining practically non-stop.

The walks here are fantastic!

 

Today we left for Townsville, as we are going to a “liveaboard” dive trip to Coral Sea tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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