Birthday trip to Magnetic Island!

We spent two nights on Magnetic Island for my birthday, and it was an absolutely amazing few days – I really loved it here!

The island is just offshore from Townsville in Queensland and most of it is a national park – both on land and the coral-rich sea around it – so it’s pretty beautiful. It’s quite a small island and not highly populated, so although there isn’t masses of stuff to do, it has a really relaxed vibe and it’s so nice to kick back and soak up the wonderful things it does have to offer.

My highlights on the island were:

• hiring a pink, Barbie style, topless car (main pic!)
• soaking up the sun on the gorgeous beaches
• spotting Australian animals in the wild
• partying at Xbase hostel

Hiring a Barbie car

We met some great people in Townsville and on the 20min ferry over to the island, and we all got together on day two to tour the island in one of the pink topless cars. The car was an absolute joke of a vehicle that looked like a toy and had a tiny engine – but it was SO much fun! There is a bus on the island, but it runs every hour to two hours, so you can have a lot more freedom and fun cruising around in an open top car. You also can’t pull over to say hi to the koala that ran across the road in front of you when you’re in a bus! :)

Unfortunately, the toy car we hired can’t be used to go to the half of the island that only has dirt tracks – you’ll need to hire a 4X4 for that.

The gorgeous beaches 

Hiring the toy car meant we could check out plenty of the island’s beautiful beaches. On our first day (my birthday!), George and I had the car to ourselves for a few hours and visited Geoffrey Bay, as we’d heard this one had loads of reef and was amazing for snorkelling. But there had been some unusually windy and stormy weather before we arrived, which had disturbed the sea bed, so the visibility was really bad and it was a waste of time snorkelling.

It was still a beautiful beach though with turquoise waters and golden sand. And, while we sat in the sun we saw a shark fin emerge from the water and thrash about before disappearing under the waves! It was only small, so we think it must have been a reef shark enjoying his dinner. Pretty exciting stuff!

Day two, Becky and Simon joined us in the Barbiemobile and we headed to Horseshoe Bay, which was absolutely stunning. We had fun hiring out kayaks here and checking out an isolated little bay that we had to ourselves – and we saw some turtles surfacing! Amazing :)

After some delicious fish and chips in Horseshoe Bay with more chips than any normal person could possibly eat, we met up with the rest of the gang and went down to the other end of the island to see Picnic Bay. This was also lovely and had a white pier where you could enjoy the view from – or divebomb into the sea from! Us girls were content with jumping in one time, but George and Simon had about 10 goes before we could drag them away haha

Spotting Australian wildlife

Magnetic Island is estimated to have around 800 wild koalas living there, so it’s a great place to see them. There’s a really nice walk in the forest called the Forts, which you can either drive or get the bus to. It leads up to an old WWII base, which has a great view, and you can spot wild koalas on the way! We went up there briefly on day one and had a 10-20min wander. Seeing a mum koala with her baby was definitely a big birthday highlight! So cute! We went for a longer walk there on day three before we caught the ferry back to Townsville and saw another three or four chilling in the tree tops.

The island is also one of the few places you can spot wild rock wallabies, which are tiny compared to normal ones, and so cute! They come out after about 4pm at the old ferry landing at Geoffrey Bay, and you can watch them hopping about and feed them. Some are really timid (they are wild after all) but plenty are a bit bolder and will come and eat from your hand, and some even enjoyed a nice little scratch behind the ear! We spent about an hour enjoying these little cuties!

Partying at Xbase

We stayed at Xbase hostel after booking a $100 package with Happy Travels, which included two nights in a dorm, one dinner, one breaky, one drink, and the ferry return ticket. We decided to upgrade to a private double room for an extra $100 between us. This was a bit of a pricey upgrade, but it was a one-off treat for my birthday and it was SO worth it! The room was a little, air-conditioned beach hut. And when I say beach hut, it was literally right on the beach overlooking the sea! So the price was pretty fair considering the amazing view and the fact that we could watch the sunrise over the sea from our bed/balcony!

The hostel bar runs different activities each night, which mostly centre around drinking a lot! It was a bit trashy at times – e.g. musical chairs where if you got knocked out you could stay in by taking some clothes off – but general it was a really buzzy atmosphere and we had a great time. Happy hour was pretty cheap ($15 dollar bottles of wine) and by the end of each night everyone was up dancing on the tables. Somehow our team also won the pub quiz on night two, which landed us with $80 to spend at the bar! Cracking prize, and things escalated quickly haha

We loved our time at Magnetic Island and Xbase from start to finish – it was probably my favourite hostel so far!