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Townsville... Discuss!!
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04-07-2012 11:17am#1Soooo regional work just over, hitting the road on Saturday and our plan was to head for Brisbane...
My BF is a carpenter and we've just been told construction work has really dried up in Brissy but a guy we know has just told us about potential work coming up in Townsville and my BF is in with a good chance of getting a job there...
So is Brissy really gone quiet?!
And has anyone been to Townsville.. What is it like?!
We really wanted to head for Brisbane but don't know what to do now....
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I live up here and I love it.
Granted I spent four years in regional Victoria so I've become somewhat immune to different levels of bogandom, but still.
The weather is just frickin AMAZING. Over 300 days of sunshine a year. Be warned, the wet season is penance for perfect utopian weather the other nine months of the year, but still.
In the wet the best thing to do is get up early (like 5am) and sort your recreational life out between 5am and 9am. I get up at 5.30am in the wet, have coffee, run the dog, then head down to the strand for a swim in the sea inside the nets. I'm usually surrounded by oldies.
I get there for 7am, swim either in the nets or in the rockpool (large man-made swimming area - colder than the sea in the nets), have a quick rinse under one of the freshwater strand showers and go into work. I can stop at one of the many cafes along the strand and get a fresh coffee and something else to eat on my way to the office and I'm in by 8.15, in the air conditioning for the day.
I love to sit on the rocks by the rockpool on a saturday morning and watch the turtles and eat portable breakfast before the day gets too hot. I also love taking my dog up to Pallarenda, a 1km stretch of off-leash dog beach in the middle of what is about a 10km stretch of sandy beach north of the town.
Crystal Creek is about 30-40 mins up the road from the town. Stop in at Frosty Mangoes (a roadside shack that does the most incredible ice cream) and then head into Paluma park and follow the signs for the Creek, either Big Creek or Little Creek. Have a freshwater swim and dive off rock formations, and when the sun comes out you realise you're sharing the water with jungle perch and freshwater turtles. It's good fun if you have a mate in the water to throw some breadcrumbs in around them and watch them get the heebies when the water starts to rumble around them because the fish are going mad for the bread.
You get a lot of AJs in Townsville (Army Jerks) and often you can't avoid them. (Given there are thousands of them stationed in the town.) What it DOES mean is that Townsville's pub and club strip is full of seriously buff blokes - I mean genuinely, 'what is this, the word wrestling federation holiday camp' style buff. It's also full of girls in teeny weeny skirts and extremely high heels. Death by alcohol appears to be a local weekend sporting event.
Full disclosure here, I'm up here because my husband is in the ADF so I know exactly what it's like when the army go out drinking. They're a lot like any other group of guys and girls out drinking, but they're actually often better behaved. You get into a lot of trouble if you cause a ruckus in the army. As a civilian, your experience may be that if you get into a drunk argument with an army bloke, you'll suddenly find 10 of his mates are intensely interested in your argument (one in, all in).
The bouncers take no messing whatsoever. (Probably comes from sorting out AJs all the time.) If you're drunk, you can't come in. And if you're too drunk, you'll have to get out. Basically Flinders Street is the same as a boisterous street in any big city, except that it's like, BIG city boisterous, but in a small town. (Does that make any sense?)
Magnetic Island is a ferry ride away and that's a lovely spot for relaxation, swimming, walking, horse riding, so on. There are some good quality, cheap hostels on the island too, which makes it a good spot for a midweek visit for a few days if you have the time.
Opportunistic crime up here in the suburbs is high.
A lot of the housing estates are laid out with detached houses on blocks of betwen 500 and 1,000m2, in rows, where the house is about 1/3 set back on the block and the back garden is fenced but the front isn't. In other words, long streets with completely open front yards. In the small hours of the morning, bored youths roam up the street and go through the front yards, checking the handles on the cars. If your car is open, they'll make off with whatever you've left in it - iPod, sat nav, tools. If your car is locked, they'll try your front door. If your front door is open, chances are the car keys are within a few feet of the front door so they literally let themselves in, take your car keys and make off with your car. They take it on a jolly joyride and leave it somewhere when the fuel's gone or they're bored. They don't burn them out and often they're recovered undamaged (except your tires will be bald from the burn outs).
For a town with about 180,000 people kicking about in it, you don't hear much in the media at all about non-opportunistic crime e.g. rapes, murders, assaults. It seems to be mostly opportunistic theft and fisticuffs on Flinders Street on a Saturday night.
There is pretty good shopping up here - three major shopping centres (Willows, Castletown and Stocklands) all with the usual - Target, Big W, a Coles, a Woolies, most of the high street clothing and shoe names.
If you drive, nowhere in Townsville is more than half an hour away, and you'll get to most places in 15 minutes or less.
If you look at it on Google maps, you'll see the strand area, Castle Hill, a railway track that runs across the town just west of Castle Hill, and then the rest of suburbia.
Suburbs - remember, TOWNSVILLE IS A FLOOD PLAIN. Areas of this town flood every single year. There's a reason 'Queenslander' is a word for a house on stilts.
Good areas for renting would include Belgian Gardens, North Ward, West End, South Townsville - avoid the avenues in Railway Estate because you'll be at least ankle deep in water more than once in the wet season. Also nice are Pimlico, Hyde Park, Hermit Park. Less delightful but close to town are Currajong and Garbutt (quite industrial). Further out, Vincent and Gulliver are feral and so's Aitkenvale - don't kid yourself, Aitkenvale is up and coming but there are some SERIOUS bogans in the section of streets between Ross River Road and the Ross river.
South of the river Annandale is expensive (and deep suburbia and full of army families), with similar for Idalia. I wouldn't rate Wulguru or Oonomba.
Further out still, steer clear of Mt Louisa, Kelso, Deeragun, Rasmussen, Balgal Beach and Bushlands Beach - mainly because they're frickin miles away but also because they're a bit feral. There's a large suburb with lots of new build called Kalynda Chase - in my mind that'd be like moving to Lucan.
Work wise, when the army rotates in you're up for all of the admin jobs and hospitality jobs and so on against a couple of thousand other applicants newly moved who are looking for work. What skills do you have and what sort of work are you after?0 -
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