Magnetic island exploring!

Just off of the coast of Townsville about 8 kilometers (5 miles) is an amazing island paradise. 

View from the Boardwalk restaurant in Nelly Bay

Magnetic Island is only a 20 minute ferry ride away. It experiences on average over 320 days of Sunshine per year, has a large 27 km² (10.4 sq mi) national park and bird sanctuary. 

Excellent walking tracks can be taken between the populated bays and to a number of tourist destinations such as the World War II forts. With 26 beautiful bays to explore & two thirds of this Tropical Paradise a national Park It's a  real treat for a day trip or a weekend getaway. 

Geoffery Bay

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.^[2] People have since explored the general area of Magnetic Island with various instruments to discover what might have caused the effect that Cook reported, but nothing has been discovered. Townsville locals refer to Magnetic Island as "Maggie". 

[wikipedia]

Had to drop the pack and flip flops (thongs) for a little toes in the sand action!

It offers some challenging biking so I decided to take my pink beauty over for a little day trip adventure! I rode from Nelly bay, where the ferry lands, to Arcadia and stopped at Geoffery Bay in-between. It started to look a bit like rain was coming so I took a detour to a small secluded bay called Alma Bay.

Surrounded by beauty, even when it's overcast.

I wasn't satisfied with just walking on the beach and wading in the water so I decided to climb some of the boulders for a more elevated view.

 

 Next time I come out to Alma I will climb to the end point, the tide was coming in so it wasn't really a good idea to do it then.

Several little islands dot the area, one can be seen here in the distance.

 Looking back onto the beach, looks like a great picnic site!

Sandy toes and a Christmas pedicure watching the waves crash up onto the rocks.

I'm a happy girl, quite at peace here... I love Australia <3

I had to get going as the weather seemed to moving in pretty quickly, so I made a quick escape 4 kilometers (2.48 miles) back to the ferry landing. Just in time too, it started raining as I left!

Magnetic Island has so many things to do, I'll be spending alot of time here and as a part of the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef Marine Park it will be a diving dream come true!!!