Townsville
— — a pink granite hill above a long shallow sea.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest city in northern Australia outside the southeast, set on Cleveland Bay where the dry tropics meet the Coral Sea. Castle Hill rises 286 metres of pink granite above the centre, with a track that locals run before dawn. The Strand follows the water for two and a half kilometres of fig trees and rock pools. Offshore, Magnetic Island sits eight kilometres out across a turquoise channel. Townsville is the mainland step to the reef, and the late dry-season light here has a quality the photographs never quite carry home. from the studio
Townsville, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Townsville is the largest urban centre in northern Australia outside the southeast corner of Queensland, with roughly 195,000 residents on Cleveland Bay along the dry-tropical coast. The city was founded in 1864 by Robert Towns and John Melton Black as a port for the inland pastoral runs, and now serves as the mainland gateway to the central Great Barrier Reef and to Magnetic Island, eight kilometres offshore. The defining landmark is Castle Hill, a pink granite monadnock rising 286 metres above the centre. James Cook University, established here in 1970, anchors a research community focused on tropical ecology and reef science.
Castle Hill is the city's spine: a 286-metre pink granite outcrop of roughly 280-million-year-old rock, rising almost directly out of the coastal flat. A goat track was cut to the summit in the 1800s, and the modern Goat Track and the sealed Cudtheringa Track are both daily commutes for runners. From the top, the view runs from the Hervey Range in the west to Magnetic Island in the east. Down at sea level, the Anzac Memorial Pool on the Strand was built in 1933, and the Tyack Stinger Enclosure offers the rare summer safe-swim ocean spot during box jellyfish season.
Townsville's dry tropical climate gives it about 320 days of sunshine a year. The wet season runs December through March, with the bulk of the city's roughly 1,100 millimetres of rain falling in short, heavy bursts and the occasional cyclone tracking down the coast. The dry season from May to October is the postcard time: clear blue days, mild nights near 15°C, and a sea that holds glass calm in the mornings. The wet brings the reef alive — coral spawning typically falls in late November on the nights following the first full moon after the November temperature rise.