Carrying American and Australian passengers , a cruise ship pulled into Townsville from Sydney on St Patrick’s Day and once again our rare old seabird , an actual shipping reporter , scooped the local media . For example , one passenger had been on 157 cruises , another more than 100 . An Australian passenger who was based in Townsville with the Army in the l970s had honeymooned on nearby Magnetic Island . He wanted to know if they still had Mini Mokes on the island . Yes, not many ... topless cars are now all the rage . Some passengers visited Magnetic Island . There was a fancy St Patrick’s Day cake display aboard ship, which our reporter was shown on an IPad ... would have made a topical pic in the Townsville Bulletin . Attractive to some passengers were the Flinders Street op shops ; Darwin op shops also toured by cruise ship visitors . The skipper and passengers were keeping a close watch on the cyclone up the coast as Cairns was the next port of call, then Darwin ...a cyclone angle for the local media , had they thought of it . Our muttering shipping scribe failed to find out who won the ship’s St Patrick’s Day bingo . Next time a cruise ship lobs in port it is strongly suggested the local media ask if it is burning toxic bunker fuel while tied up at the wharf. Bunker fuel got a federal politician kicked out of parliament for dribbling the black stuff in the building. Incidently, the Townsville Bulletin finally caught up with the shipping reporter's expose about the rusting hulk of the former patrol boat HMAS Townsville , revealing there is a whole lot of dithering among landlubbers.
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Rusting and locked up , HMAS Townsville , like much of CBD.
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