Townsville Area 8/06 to 24/06

The ‘Bushy’ Parker reserve at Rollingstone was extremely popular with locals and travellers alike over the June long weekend. However it is quite a large area and never seemed to be overcrowded. The Townsville region would have to have the best collection of free camping areas anywhere. Found mostly to the north of the city all are less than 50Km from the centre of town. They range from small beachside sites like Saunders Beach and Balgal Beach, to much larger ones at Bluewater, Toomulla Beach and Rollingstone. All have clean flush toilets and access to good clean drinking water and, most have an outside cold shower. Good on you Townsville and Thuringowa Council !! Understandably, they are all very popular and were quite full each night.

Waterfront Parklands in the old part of Townsville

We took good advantage of all of the above areas as we spent more than two weeks in the area waiting for tyres for our caravan. Even being the large regional city that Townsville is, none of the tyre dealers we visited (about 7 or 8) had suitable tyres in stock. A few of the dealers were able to order them in for us, and after agreeing on a price we placed an order. The appointment was made to have them fitted but when we arrived we found the wrong tyres had been sent from the warehouse. So after much more negotiation we agreed to wait another eight days while they were ordered from ‘down south’ (Brisbane or Sydney ?) only to find ,yet again, that the wrong ones had been sent. What to do next? With the tyres still just legal we decided to continue our journey in the hope of finding a set along the way.

Along 'The Strand'

In spite of all this we very much enjoyed our stay in the area and we think Townsville is quite a nice place to visit. We visited the city several times to stroll along ‘The Strand’ waterfront area and also visited the botanic gardens as well as the Cockatoo Creek area of the Bowling Green Bay N.P. to the southwest.

Botanic Gardens

Part of the Palmetum

Tropical Rainforest Walk