Perched on an abandoned World War II gun mount, I surveyed Magnetic Island’s rocky coast and the Australian Coral Sea. Yellow eucalyptus flowers dotted the hillside, and the turquoise blue water shimmered in the June sunshine. It was hard to believe this place had been a war zone, with guns positioned to shoot at Japanese planes. My father had visited the island during the war, and I tried to imagine what it must have looked like through his 26-year-old eyes. To my right, I spotted Townsville’s busy harbor on the mainland, eight kilometers away, the home of Garbutt Air Field, the largest in the South Pacific during the war. My father was one of the 50,000 US and Australian troops stationed there. To my left were the glistening white sands of Horseshoe Bay. Behind me, the island hills rolled, in waves of yellow blossoms and reddish-tinged leaves. Except for the now-abandoned military outpost and the absence of Japanese war planes overhead, I doubted much had changed since my father visited this spot in 1944.

I had dragged my two daughters, ages 4 and 14, 7,000 miles from our home in Arizona to Magnetic Island, off the coast of Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef, to sit at this spot, to swim in Horseshoe Bay’s calm waters, to walk in my father’s footsteps, to understand his war.

I first heard of “Maggie,” as the locals called it, from old letters he sent to my mother. He often visited the island, renting a beach shack at Horseshoe Bay next to a pineapple farm. His descriptive letters captivated me. As a wildlife biologist, I was intrigued by the landscape he described. For the past year I had been working on a book about his war experiences, piecing together his story from letters and memories. Visiting the island would bring me closer to his world.

June 28, 1944. . .Another day, another beach, but the same old sunshine, beautiful as always, warm but comfortable, truly a lazy life. Today we journeyed out to an island just off the shore, takes about an hour to get out there by boat, and costs 2 shillings (33 cents) for the round trip. We left at 8:30 this morning and the boat leaves here at 5:00 this evening for the return trip, quite a day of it. I must say this is really a beautiful place and is what Catalina Island is to California, only this is very wild and unspoiled.

Captain Cook christened the island with its intriguing name after his navigational instruments acted peculiarly when he explored the surrounding waters in 1770. Today, ecotourism and beaches lure visitors. The pineapple farms and beach shacks are long gone, displaced by expensive homes, horse pastures, and kangaroos. The island’s coastal areas have been quaintly urbanized with shops catering to beachgoers, boaters, and hikers. More than half of the island’s 52-square-kilometer area remains wild and pristine, with beaches and eucalyptus forests protected in a national park. The passenger ferry now offers 15 daily trips and costs $25.00 per person (Australian). Magnetic Island can also be reached by a separate car ferry and reservations are essential (www.magnetic-island.com.au/car-ferry.htm). Read More...