We woke to a beautiful sunrise, said goodbye to our friendly host as we ate our continental breakfast and drove away from our peaceful 3 day stay.

Our destination was Townsville but we always find a place or two to stop along the way and today’s was determined by a giant mango! Turns out the town of Bowen invested in building a giant mango to attract tourists and it worked – we visited! And stayed for quite a while as we explored the interesting town. (Note that mango trees are grown here).

The woman at the tourist information center was enthusiastic about Bowen and provided us with a map and pointers on where to go during our short visit – and it was fun to follow her guidance for a few hours.

Next was the lookout on the hill…

And then we had lunch at Horseshoe Bay – great area for rock climbing which I did for a little while :).

We are now at the Aquarius Hotel in Townsville along the waterfront. We drove though a pretty big town but this is the beach area called The Strand and is quite nice.