May 5 Townsville

We've found the place to move to.  Townsville is lovely.  Not a big city, but warm both in temperature and attitude.  

We arrived about 9AM and immediately went to the shuttle bus for the ride into the middle of town.  At the terminus of the shuttle they had another loop shuttle set up that would loop around the city--sort of a hop on hop off bus.  We took that to the end of the Strand -- the ocean front.

Cruise terminal

Today's local paper with a big story about our ship.  Townsville's about 200K people, so even a small ship like ours is a big deal.  TV news crews were shooting video as we left the cruise terminal for the shuttle bus. 

 Everything in Australia (except the humans) is trying to kill you.  In the ocean the stinging jellyfish will make you wish you hadn't been swimming in THEIR ocean.  So the Aussies put nets around their swimming beaches to keep the jellyfish out.  They hope.

For Steve

 Castle Hill.  We didn't climb it.

Beach art, a subclass of street art

 For Aussies, lifeguard is an honored and noble profession.  And the guy with the metal detector is part of any beach.

 Bazza and Shazza, bronze sculptures, street art

 Pink water in the fountain.  On purpose, we think.

 Lots of picnic tables and "barbies" along the Strand.

A very pretty parrot in a tree full of them.

 The yacht basin, with our big yacht in the background

 ANZAC war memorial

 Fortunately, the squirrel is leashed to the building

 We don't normally take pictures of lunch, but in this case we picnic-ed in a city park across from the Woolies were we bought a couple of ham sandwiches, Pringles and cokes.  It was delightful.

 Back at the cruise terminal, the Townsillians were showing off their snakes.  I guess they waited until we were returning to the ship before showing them off.