Julien DIOT: Globeblogger in Outdoor Sports
Julien DIOT: Globeblogger in Outdoor Sports

Magnetic Island: MTB and Koalas

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After Mission Beach we reached Townsville, the largest tropical city in Queensland. The place is lovely with its marina, its beautiful lookout from Castle Hill and also Magnetic Island you can reach by ferry. It was expensive ($32/person) but the island discovered by Captain Cook and his spinning compass crazy is a really nice paradise where lives the widest population of wild koala in all Australia.

The day before the trip, I called Sam, the owner of Outer Limits Adventure. He is a really nice person and he offered us a great deal: 7 excellent condition mountain bikes with 29 inches wheels (we call those mountain bikes “29er”) for $150. Usually to get a bike like that, you have to spend around $40 a day. It is the price I paid to Graham, owner of BikeStop Expresso, for my day trip in Smithfield Mountain Bike Park.

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The island is hilly and you have a lot of trails to ride. We had a flat tyre after half an hour but after checked the pressure in every tyres we didn’t have any trouble. Florence Bay is my favourite spot with a really cool shelter on the sand near to the sea.

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We rode all the day long without see any koala but on the way back to the ferry, we were lucky. A 4WD behind me on a steep road started to overtake me but then stopped. The reason? There was a wild koala looking the sunset from the top of its eucalyptus. Everybody was tired after a 40 km ride with the head looking down the floor. This unexpected meeting made everybody happy and gave us enough energy to finish our big loop to the ferry.

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WTOE: Grasshopper Guide_Magnetic Island

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