A magical experience at Magnetic Island

MAGNETIC Island is a place of spectacular natural beauty and one of the best and cheapest locations for a lazy tropical family holiday.

Magnetic Island is a great cheap holiday spot for the family / Flickr user Eyeintim

MAGGIE'S special like nowhere else.

That's Magnetic Island, near Townsville.

Let loose in the tropics, the kids run barefoot, swim, snorkel, climb boulders, draw in the sand, cry like curlews and feed wildlife to connect with nature in a way they never do at home.

Swimming amongst the palms, families share in an island adventure, learning to name Dunk Island butterflies, curlews and lorikeets - as well as frangipani, hibiscus, kapok and curtain fig trees.

And they see the sky as never seen in the city - postcard-pink at sunset and lit up at night by a festive extravaganza of stars.

"It's God's own garden up here,'' declares one of the locals, as we feed dozens of screaming lorikeets on our deck near Alma Bay.

Maggie is a place of spectacular natural beauty and the best and cheapest location for a lazy tropical family holiday that I know. Which is why as a former Townsville local, I've gone there for nearly 40 years and why I've taken my seven-year-old son Jack there nearly every year of his life.

For the first time on the island, this year we tried sailing.

The Providence, a large 62-foot schooner moored at Nelly Bay, offers not only sunset sails but sleepover charter trips and luxury day trips, which in our case included a gourmet picnic lunch on the empty beach at Radical Bay and all snorkel gear.

With an outboard dinghy to drop us offshore at the snorkel spot, we saw brightly coloured fish of all kinds under water.

My son was excited to slide into two-metre-deep water to try his first snorkel at Florence Bay, exclaiming five times that day:

"Snorkelling is really great. Let's do it again.''

An English family on board from the Isle of Wight were also wildly enthusiastic.

Providence skipper Grant Lewis says that at different times of the year passengers can see humpback whales, dugong and giant turtles.

"We try to get the kids involved in the sail,'' he says. "We get them to pull on ropes and haul a bit of sail or put them up in the rigging in a body harness. They love it. Sometimes we have kids' birthday parties on board.''

Lewis says families also like the two-to-four day charters to an island of their choice.

"You can sleep on deck in swags and watch for shooting stars.''

Lewis and his wife, author, journalist and academic Lindsay Simpson, have lived on Maggie since 2005, after falling in love with the island and moving from Tasmania.

"Sometimes I get offered airfares to Sydney but I never want to take them,'' says Simpson. "It is just so peaceful and tropical here. Over Christmas when I was writing my new book, I realised I hadn't left the island for weeks.''

As many of us have found over the years, Maggie is indeed one of those seductive places which can change your life.

Captain Cook was one of the first to go off track in 1770, with his compasses wavering due to magnetic forces he assumed were from the island's massive boulders.

Celebrities such as Russell Crowe visit the island and locals include artist Peter Lawson, the grandson of legendary Australian bush poet Henry Lawson, who has a gallery at Arcadia and Sasha Stafford, daughter of showbiz promoter Michael Edgley, who runs the Barefoot Gallery at Horseshoe Bay.

For my own part, I never intended to go there every year for half a lifetime but somehow it's hard to stay away.

Some island residents I know were born there and have never left. Others are southern exiles who started businesses or were lucky enough to find work there or in Townsville.

Populated by 3000, the island has a spirited and arty community with a public bus service, a primary school, an RACQ vehicle breakdown service and a Chamber of Commerce.

In terms of tourism, the island has long been a backpacker haunt, but is just as popular with families. Seventy per cent of the island is national park and there are 23 bays, teeming with marine life. Years ago I swam with a majestic giant turtle off Alma Bay, an unforgettable encounter.

Entertaining the kids is easy because there are so many low-cost activities. The family can swim, snorkel and fish, kayak, play golf, go bushwalking, play basketball, hire bikes, go to the Horseshoe Bay skate park, ride scooters, feed fish, lorikeets, possums and wallabies, watch toad racing, go rock-climbing, play on the Flying Fox at the Alma Bay playground, visit the giant clam aquarium or some of the artists' studios, cook a BBQ on the beach, watch the sunset at Horseshoe Bay, see a community movie on Friday night, eat a curry at the Arcadia Friday night markets, or go to the Arcadia pub to play snooker, jump on the giant jumping pillow, swim in the pool or play arcade games.

For those with more to spend, it is great fun to hire a topless moke, ride horses, ride a jet ski, take a speedboat tube ride, hold a small crocodile or koala at Bungalow Bay, scuba dive, see a show at the Stage Door Theatre at Arcadia or sail on a yacht.

The two compelling drawcards are that it hardly ever rains on Maggie - there are 320 days of sunshine a year - and that it's never crowded.

In 2009, Queensland attracted 17 million interstate and overseas visitors, according to Tourism Queensland, but Maggie only about 270,000 visitors a year, according to estimates from the island's Tourism Operators and Businesses Magnetic Island (TOBMI).

"The island has a strong sense of community and a very low crime rate. You might call it a safe haven for kids,'' says Sara Shaw, who is on the TOBMI committee.

"Island artists work on projects with children, there are kids' golf and bowls days and the youngsters can also get up on stage at the Magnetic Island Musicians Club nights.''

Two of the biggest annual events are the Great Tropical Jazz Party and Magnetic Island Race Week, both held in August/September.

Best times to visit are the April and October school holidays for families as July can be cool and the summer months, when there are also marine stingers - too hot.

Family rooms are not hard to find and discount travel website wotif offers studios from $70 per night at hostels such as Magnums at Arcadia and $74 at Bungalow Bay, up to $216 at the five-star Peppers Blue-on-Blue Resort at Nelly Bay. Or there's the two-bedroom Alma Beach House for $145 per night at Arcadia or two-bedroom apartments at the Island Palms Resort at Nelly Bay from $150 a night.

Local cuisine ranges from modern Australian to seafood, Mexican, French, Asian and pizza. Peppers, which overlooks the water, offers $15 kids' meal deals.

Maggie is easily combined with a visit to Townsville, which is a 20-minute ferry ride away with many family attractions.

These include the amazing Strand water playground, Reef HQ and the Imax, The Museum of Tropical Queensland, Tobruk Pool on The Strand, Flinders Street Mall (currently being upgraded), the Rock Pool, Kirwan's Riverways swimming complex, where baby turtles can be fed and the Billabong Sanctuary reptile park, where the kids can see big crocodiles.

Townsville has upmarket restaurants in Palmer Street and Jupiters Casino has a good buffet dinner where kids eat free.

There is still a refreshing lack of commercialism about unspoiled Magnetic Island - while luxury apartments have elevated the skyline, there is still no McDonalds, no Club Med, no cinemas or shopping malls.

"It's like living in the 1950s here,'' declared one Horseshoe Bay shopkeeper. "Our kids run around and have a great time and we know they are OK. It's magic.''

IF YOU GO:
Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin fly to Townsville Airport, then Magnetic Island is a 20-minute ferry ride from the city fringe.

Accommodation can be found at wotif.com and magnetic-island.com.au.

Sailing trips can be booked at providence-sailing.com.au.

The writer was a guest of Providence Sailing.