122 Mandalay Avenue

Nelly Bay QLD 4819

The gated property can be found at the end of a no through road, it is surrounded by National Park providing a very private retreat with a natural creek flowing through it offering the perfect getaway from the hustle and bustle of city life.

This Magnetic Island home which is abundant with character and stepped in family history is looking for a new family after bringing immense joy to the current owners. Please take the time to read the message written by the son that follows at the end.

A block of land this size that has so much to offer in Nelly Bay is a very rare find.

If this sounds like the escape you have been looking for call MaryAnne to arrange a private inspection today.

A message from the family:
In 1976 our parents noticed an advertisement in the Australian for a 15-acre ex-pineapple farm on Magnetic Island, North Queensland. Our father was working as a doctor in Hobart and our mother was working as a teacher and they were yearning for a change. Within days, our mother was on a plane, then the old timber ferry to Picnic Bay. She fell in love with the extraordinary landscape of the Island, dominated by wild tumbling granite headlands and wind-sculpted Hoop pines above pristine clear water beaches. She also fell in love with the magical rainforest retreat she had come to see, bordered on 3 sides by National Park and accessed by a bridge over Gustav Creek.
Needless to say, she bought the property and our family of 5 (3 school-aged children) headed north in a Combi van and camped on borrowed mattresses until the furniture arrived.

The main house was perfect then (and remains so now) with little change necessary, just upgraded kitchen and bathrooms and extension of the deck. The indoors and outdoors remain inseparable. The outdoors has evolved from a tropical garden to a rainforest garden continuous with the surrounding vine forests. We still eat outside at night surrounded by native gingers and palms.

Even deeper into the wildness is a huge separate living and sleeping retreat built by our parents a few years after we arrived. Every window in both houses looks onto verdant nature. In the filtered morning light we can watch sunbirds flitting to their pendulous nests. The entire garden is a riot of birdsong.

Our mother wanted to come back as a Brahminy Kite, a majestic white and chestnut seabird of the north. On our most recent visit, we noticed a kite circling the grand old Hoop pine below the house and realised that it was building a nest at the summit.

In the early days, the ferry trip to town took 45 minutes and was relatively limited (now it takes 20 minutes by a very regular water cat service). None of us kids cared to go to town on weekends. There was so much to do here, beaches and hiking and snorkelling, windsurfing, sailing, boating and wet season water holes and waterfalls. At home, there was the bush, the creek, the swimming pool, the new tennis court and a cool shed where we could hang out with our friends away from adults. We also had such a rich family life away from the busyness and distraction of city living, yet so close to Townsville for school, work and travel.

We have all moved to lives and families in other places, but Magnetic Island remains a sacred and magic home. We've all continued to gravitate to this home as a refuge. Now with partners, children and grandchildren. The experience of spending time here only grows richer.

Our father has moved away and has not been able to visit during the pandemic and is now too frail to live in this extraordinary environment. In our hearts, the property and the Island will always be a spiritual home, but we can't spend enough time there to justify holding on to this place.

We are certain that there is a someone who can take over the care and love of our special place.