Days 24/5 – July 27th and 28th. Townsville, a tale of two towns

Naming places after people can get problematic. For example, Cooktown isn’t palatable any more given what we keep learning about what happened with European settlement in Australia. Town names can be interesting, for example, we just stayed in Rose Bay (Bowen) and now we are in Rowes Bay (Townsville). Sometimes they don’t seem to make sense. For instance, in Scotland there is a place called Loch Loch, Loch being a Scottish Gaelic word for Lake. Lake Lake is just superfluous. Having a place called Townsville is a bit the same because a town is a small city and the suffix “-ville” means town or city. Is this place City City? As Townsville is not a big city, being named twice seems overkill. A bit like Gin Gin as they don’t have an abundance of Gin there. Anyway, it is named after some dude Robert Towns who never lived here, but did help co-found the town. Creating towns seems to be in his bloodline.

Having been to Townsville before, we had seen the main sights and this gave us some time for required van repairs on the awning and a bloody long walk given we had been in the car for a couple of days. We walked 1.5 hours into Town Town’s town centre to check out the information centre and get information to plan some trips while in FNQ. This exercise only left us with exercise. The shop was shut but it did allow us to have our Apple watch fitness rings closed. My last review of Townsville four years ago was gushing. This time I can tell you the industrial estate on town town’s outskirts is amply supplied by all the big names in camping, shopping and alcohol sales.

Big 4 Rowes Bay – Townsville Google review.

This park is so big that if you were considering to change the way you camp, you can go for a stroll and see every set up you can think of. Needing a code to get into the park, and then remembering a code to go to the toilets seems to be an unnecessary evil as there is not much in the way of passing people wanting to come in and grab a quick shower. All it does is test the bladder at 3:30am while you punch in various numbers from the last 5 parks you have been at, hoping they are the right one. 4 Stars.