Townsville

The Strand in Townsville is certainly a vibrant, busy place.  It is a beautiful long beach area that consists of a terrific waterpark for children, BBQ areas, various memorials, including their Cenotaph, a Coral Sea Battle Memorial and a National Servicemen's Memorial.  Townsville hosted a National Servicemen's Reunion on the weekend, a well attended event of which a friend from Tasmania attended and we'd agreed to meet while he was in Townsville.  Said mate attended a reunion there a few years back and we set off to re-visit the Thuringowa RSL Club - it is an unusual Club indeed, being way out of town, in a paddock on it's own, and certainly not easy to find, but we (he) did!  We talked to some recently discharged Diggers and enjoyed the ambience of the Club!  Activities organised for the reunion included a concert, Dawn Service, March and Memorial Service and other social functions.  The concert featured Normie Rowe and Judy Stone as well as the brilliant 1 RAR Band - a great open air concert on The Strand!  Well done Townsville!  On Sunday we attended the Dawn Service and then I got photos of him marching into Anzac Park, and while he attended the Memorial Service & BBQ after, I had to leave to get to my next planned stop, called Funny Dunny.

Funny Dunny sits about 20km off the main road and is close to the beach.  So what's funny about the dunny?  Can't say, as it is one of the modern functional composting toilets found in remote areas, so my guess is the original may have been unique.  The area is a popular recreation area with use over the years obvious.  It also, unfortunately, has those nasty little sand flies and I can state from experience that Listerine doesn't deter them.  Unfortunately I haven't yet found the Nature's Botanicals insect repellent - designated for horses but is a natural product used by stringers apparently.  It is a pleasant spot with quite a compliment of bush turkeys - start tossing out a bit of food and a dozen of them will soon gather around!  Two nites were spent here with the thought of perhaps a fish feed but they are not biting (I should have been here yesterday:  Further up by the channel - 2km up the beach - is where they are....).  It has been a good rest tho and a good test for the solar panel, which proved successful!