After their evening of playing don’t-hide-and-creep at the pub, the fascist bush-stone curlews were much quieter and I awoke on Day 3 well rested. A leisurely breakfast and then we headed out to catch the bus to Picnic Bay.
While waiting for the bus, we could see the HMAS Choules chugging along out at sea. It’s an amphibious landing vehicle dock, so we were pretty sure the mainland was finally starting the invasion. About time, too.
Where Nelly Bay is the site for most of the island’s resorts, Picnic Bay is where all the backpackers and hostels are. It also has a super long jetty, a pub, and nothing else. The weather was a little overcast when we got there, so the bay didn’t look as pretty as it could – as we found out later when the sun came out.
After a walk along the jetty we had a stroll along the ambitiously named “Picnic Bay mall”. It’s a nice walkway amongst Morton Bay figs but that’s all it was – nothing mall-like about it. We were lucky enough to see a couple of pheasant coucals*. We grabbed lunch at the Picnic Bay Hotel, where a pretty cool fishtank was filled with also-cool fishies. Because Magnetic Island menus seem somewhat limited, I had a chicken burger. Eva would have had the Thai Noodle salad, except they were out of that but they offered the Asian Beef salad instead, and swapped the beef for chicken. I’m sure you wanted to know that, you can’t say I’m not informative in these reports.
As we ate our lunch, the weather cleared and afterwards we went for another walk along the jetty while we waited for the bus to pick us up. It was a much more pleasing view with the sun shining, although the wind was pretty fierce. Another stop off at the IGA in Nelly Bay for some more supplies, and we walked back to our accommodation in Arcadia. A leisurely afternoon of reading and napping, before a home-cooked dinner and a chilled evening watching 1993 film The Three Musketeers. We’re so cool.
Footnotes
* A species of cuckoo bird, although we did not see any clocks.