Golf at Townsville

Tuesday 18^th August 2015

Today is Carole’s birthday and it is another great day in FNQ. We have organized to play golf with Geoff and Jenny from “Ruby” in Townsville today, We caught the 8.25 am ferry to Townsville with our golfing gear and they were there to greet us with their daughters car.

We squeeze into to the VW Golf with all of our gear and drive to the Willows Golf Course where we have a booking for a 10 am tee off.

The course is designed for carts rather than walking, and the deal they are offering today for 18 holes for 2 golfers including the motorized cart for $60 a couple is a good deal. The course is a very good layout, if not a bit dry which means the ball runs a lot further than on courses that we are used to.

It is also a Mica Cup round and Mike starts poorly wiping the first 3 holes, whilst Carole had a par and a birdie in the first 3 holes, giving her an 8 point lead.

Her golf was very consistent through out the round beating everyone finishing with 38 points., with Geoff and Jenny on 32 and Mike on 26 points wiping 5 holes in the round. Carole now has a 12 point lead which will be difficult to reel back.

Carole with yet another winning putt

Geoff, Jenny and Carole on the 18th green

After golf we drove back into Townsville to get some lunch, as there was no food available at the golf course. We intuitively headed for the Townsville Yacht Club, owners of the marina where Ruby is currently berthed. Food service there closed at 2.30pm and we had to walk down the street to find food somewhere, passing many pubs and other venues that stopped serving food at 2.30 pm. Eventually we found a hamburger place called Grill’d, a franchise as far as I know. The burgers were as good as any I have tasted .

We caught the ferry back to Magnetic after thanking Geoff and Jenny for a great day, arriving back at the island at 4.30pm.

Departing back out of the river in Townsville for Magnetic Island

There have been a few new arrivals at our marina arm since we left this morning. Our other Hanse colleagues on Eureka have appeared, as have a few other boats filling the gaps that existed on our arm.

There was a bit of a social get together on the arm finding out what everyone was planning to do, before we had a birthday drink for Carole on Mica, with Mark and Janet, before going to dinner.

Finding a nice restaurant open on Tuesday night, close the marina, quickly narrowed the choice to Peppers, or what used to be an up market French restaurant called Le Paradis. We took a gamble that maybe  Le Paradis still had good fine dining food, but have have had to adapt the restaurant to serve a more basic menu to keep them afloat.

The meal we had was very good and I think they have probably found a good balance, offering a range of food options that appeal to a wide audience. The thing that I have really noticed all the way up the QLD coast is that restaurants can’t afford to pay waiting staff, so placing your order at he cash register is quite prevalent.

We have also seen examples of restaurants simply not opening on Public Holidays and their competitors that do charging huge surcharges .