NSCnews Online August_2017 | Page 63

EXPLORE Townsville with Deni Griffiths I MAGINE spending a leisurely few hours nearby, where you can fi sh for either fresh or saltwater barramundi? Big ones, too... perhaps a metre long! Or maybe you feel like catching a mangrove jack? Somewhere you can enjoy a picnic with beautiful scenery, multiple playgrounds for the kids, a pedestrian bridge and kilometres of cement pathways along which you or the kids can walk, ride bikes or skateboard? Somewhere you can be shaded by huge, luscious old raintrees, and listen to the parrots squawking and chattering above? Being a lifer local, there are some suburban secrets I take for granted, until I visit other regions and realise what we have here is pretty special. Only fi ve minutes away from Lavarack Barracks, Aplins Weir on the Ross River is one of those inglorious jewels, a sleeper. AUGUST 2017 | 63