June 18

Sadly, I still am not able to put on the slide showa, but here are some pictures and hopefully in 2 days I will be able to put on lots and lots of pictures.
Magnetic Island is affectionately referred to as Maggie by the locals. We have rented a small house here and it feels like a treehouse. There are sliding glass doors on 3 sides and it is up on stilts, so we are really in the treetops. Our house borders the National Park. Last night we saw a small rock wallaby hopping around and this morning we saw a male brush turkey working on his mound. Male brush turkeys incubate the eggs, so I am guessing, the better his mound, the more likely a female will choose him as a mate. We haven’t seen the resident koala or kookaburra yet.
Early this morning we took a hike up to The Forts. Magnetic Island was a gun emplacement and radar station used to defend the Townsville Bay from the Japanese during World War II. You can see from the photos what a great view the lookouts would have from Magnetic Island. Mrs. Morris is standing on one of the bases for the guns. They must have been huge. Supposedly, there were many koalas along the trail, but after we read the warning about death adders, we tended to look down rather than up. Fortunately we were able to see several koalas later in the day at Bungalow Bay.
After a delicious breakfast at Horseshoe Bay, we went to Bungalow Bay for a guided walk through their wildlife center. We got to hold lots of animals, lizards, a snake, a crocodile and a koala. The koala was named Barney. Peter was too little to hold him so he held Peter.
We learned that Captain Cook named this island Magnetical Island, because he thought it interfered with his compass. There is no magnetic interference here however. Our guide thought perhaps Captain Cook was hitting the bottle a little too hard.
Tomorrow we go to the Outback on the train. It is doubtful we will have Internet until we disembark the train. In Mount Isa we will be exploring the fossil record of Australia’s rainforest. Look for another post in 2 days. Cheers!
And now for Mrs. Morris’ small moment. Spending time out in nature can often be a humbling experience. We have encountered many humbling experiences since we began our adventures in the Land Down Under and today is no exception. As has been the beginning of most of our mornings, we took off on a “short” 4K hike up the Fort Walk. This hike extolled the spectacular views of many bays in the area and warned of death adder snakes and rocky terrain but we forged on.
Magnetic Island was used as a lookout point during World War II. On the way up we encountered two gun emplacements, where some of the “rocks” are actually false and are the remains of the camouflaging over the gun barrels. The guns were a precaution and never used. At the top among the granite boulders and trees are two buildings, the Observation Tower and the Command Post. All building materials were carried up from a hastily built track, as there were no roads at the time.
The views were indeed spectacular, the terrain rocky and we encountered no death adders, but it did start my feeling of humbleness. Thinking of the men that may have walked this same path was thought provoking. Being in the gun emplacements, the observation tower and command center waiting for something horrendous to happen must have been extremely stressful to say the least. I wonder what they may have been feeling and thinking. Were they as in awe of the terrain as we are today or were they too engrossed in the task at hand?
So today, as I hiked up the Fort Walk I was not only humbled by nature, but by the history of this country from a time when the whole world was at war. I felt small.