Brisbane - Cairns with a motorhome

On Saturday morning, we picked up our motorhome at Apollo in Brisbane. Again, through a cheap relocation offer. This time, the vehicle pick-up took quite a while. So we didn't leave until about 9:30 am. Unfortunately, the motorhome was also a bit older and looked accordingly. You could definitely tell it had covered around 275,000 kilometers.

For this trip, we had planned to stay at the same campsite for two nights. Because of this, we decided to cover the majority of the distance on the first two days.

We spent the first night at a campsite in Rockhampton. The place wasn't anything special (lots of insects in the bathrooms, etc.) and we continued driving directly after breakfast the next day.

We spent the next two nights at a beautiful campsite in Townsville. Here, we had a pool and were right by the sea. In this region, you have to be very careful and it's best to only swim in fenced areas protected from jellyfish. For example, there are Chironex fleckeri jellyfish in the water.

For the next day, we decided to take a day trip to a nearby island (Magnetic Island). You can take a ferry from Townsville to the island and buy a day ticket for the bus on the island. We had purchased both together at the campsite the day before (39$ per person).

After arriving on the island, we first took the bus to Horseshoe Bay, a bay at the northern end of the island, to go swimming. In the afternoon, we went on the Fortswalk. A approximately 1.5-hour hiking trail located in the inland of the island. Here, you can see koalas in the eucalyptus trees - well, we at least spotted one. We didn't continue to the end of the trail, to the fort, as it was too exhausting in the heat.

Afterwards, we visited Koala Village (the bus in the other direction only left about 1.5 hours later). This is a complex where you can stay overnight in bungalows. There are many small colorful parrots here and kangaroos roam the area. You can also pet koalas here (for a fee during opening hours).

At around 5 pm, we walked to Bremner Point. There, you can feed the rock wallabies (small kangaroos) by hand at this time of day, at least if you bring a bit of peace and patience.

Afterwards, we left the island by ferry. For dinner, we went to Townsville. Unfortunately, due to a thunderstorm with heavy rainfall, we were initially forced to stay in the city. Unfortunately, we had forgotten to close the windows of the motorhome. That means we had to dry the interior somewhat for the night.

Thankfully, everything else worked out and on Tuesday we were able to return the motorhome in Cairns in a dry condition.

For Cairns, we booked a double room in a backpacker hostel on the waterfront for 4 nights.