Our last full day on the island, and it was a big one. We’d saved Tripadvisor’s #1 Thing To Do for last – and that was the infamous Magnetic Island Forts Walk. Maggie Island is the place to go if you like bushwalking – it has a network of over 26km of walking trails and 80% of the island is protected national park. The 4.5km Forts Walk is a moderately-easy* trek up the hills between Horseshoe Bay and Florence Bay.
After the Pearl Harbour attacks marked Japan’s expansion into the second World War, Townsville and Darwin became the two main military supply hubs in Australia for the Allies. But Townsville was very poorly defended, so plans were developed to fortify the region including the building of two gun batteries on Magnetic Island. The north-east corner of the island gave the soldiers a nearly unobscured view of the Townsville port and Coral Sea. Two French-built 155mm guns were able to fire a 42-kilogram projectile more than 20 kilometres. In 1942, Australian intelligence forces intercepted and cracked Japanese plans for a large-scale air raid on Townsville, involving more than 120 aircraft. Japanese commanders eventually scrapped the plans, fearing the planes would be spotted and attacked by mainland forces before they could reach their targets. By the time the Magnetic Island fortifications were built, the War had turned in the Allied forces’ favour, and the guns never ended up firing a shot at the enemy. They were returned to the Americans after the War, but remnants of most of the structures still remain on the island.
And initially, those structural remains are not particularly interesting. There’s a concrete slab where the women’s shower block was, and a similar concrete slab remains where the officer’s showers were. There’s a slab of concrete that marks the mess hall, and a slab of concrete where there used to be a workshop. But as you climb higher up the hills, you see actual structures still in place – ammunition stores, observation posts and the circular tracks for the gun placements.
Even without the history and the fortifications, the walk is still gloriously impressive. The quintessential Aussie Outback trees, the spectacular views of pristine bays, and an equally impressive collection of birds and animals. Most notably, when we went to look at the officer’s bathroom concrete slab, we startled a mob of kangaroos**! They bounded about a little bit, but they didn’t scatter too far and we were able to still appreciate them from a short distance. And after we’d done two thirds of the walk, Eve observed that we hadn’t seen any koalas, even though we’d heard many reports of sightings along the walk. Ten minutes later I spotted a fuzzy grey blob in a fork in a tree, and kept my eyes on it while I walked down the steps to get closer to it. Sure enough, a sleepy koala was sitting in a fork in a tree. He wasn’t easy to photograph, but he was cute and we were happy that we’d at least seen a koala in the wild!
Even though the walk was pretty easy, it was still quite a workout in the hour and fifteen minutes that it took us to do, and by the end my hips and knees were complaining! I strongly advise against getting older, bodies simply aren’t good at it. Feeling weary, we took the bus back to our accommodation where we rang Baked on Maggies and ordered food to be delivered. We watched some TV, and did some packing, before having an early night. The next day was our departure, and our last few hours on this most magnificent island paradise.
Footnotes
* Well, mostly moderately-easy. There are some parts that make the Thousand Steps look like a gentle stroll.
** They may have been wallabies, but the way they moved and sat on their tails made us think small kangaroos.