01.05.2026

The night continued to bring heavy rain and the sky was gray when we set off, but it was 22 °C. We are in the tropics, yet it's 'Autumn'! After 70 km, we made a stop in Bowen. Reason: the two large mangoes, one at the entrance to the town and the other in the town center. Mangoes are cultivated here, and we passed some plantations. Unfortunately, it's currently not harvest season. As you can see in the pictures, we again enjoyed glorious sunshine! The town has implemented some marketing ideas, as there isn't much going on. The main street, Herbert Street, cannot be compared to Hamburg. It's just incredibly wide, and you'll discover large murals depicting aspects of the history on building facades as well as on houses in some side streets. There are now 27 'murals', as they are called. We had a plan to find them. Additionally, the town promotes that the film 'Australia', featuring Nicole Kidman in the lead role, was filmed here in 2008. The story is set in Darwin around 1940. Some of the old houses in Bowen influenced the director's choice of this filming location. The sets were all dismantled afterward.

After that, we continued north. The farmers here seem to be doing well; you can see it in the condition of their properties, and modern heavy machinery is in use everywhere. By around 1 PM, we reached the ferry port of Townsville, 30 °C! However, since our ferry was booked for 3 PM, we waited and began reading the informational material about Magnetic Island. We have two nights again in a modern hotel by the harbor. Will we find magnetic stones? But for that, during our first scouting round, we found the rocks by the sea where the wallabies gather in large numbers, indulging in carrots offered by tourists. They are about the size of large rabbits and are a mini-kangaroo variant. They also ate from our hands! It only got dark here around 6:30 PM, and we could only glimpse the sunset again...