Daniel and Marysia around Australia: Mission Beach, Far North Tropical QLD.

Mango Icecream at 10 in the morning!

Heading back onto the A1 north up to Bowen, through Ayr up onto Townsville was the day's destination. The weather was good, clear, bright sunny day not too hot so I had the perfect opportunity of driving the destination all the way up to Townsville as Daniel concentrated on the laptop trying to arrange the purchase of solar panels for the car before we headed to Cape York. He had decided that the solar panels would be a necessity for the car fridge during the three weeks that we would be travelling this far North without the van in tow.

The scenery again was awesome. The Great Dividing Range just rose in front of us, keeping us company all the way into Townsville. The sugarcane plantations either side of the Bruce Hwy signified this areas important reliance on this commercial crop. We'd stopped at a road side for a stretch, toilet break and a strong coffee before hitting the next section of road to take us into Townsville. With some small supplies purchased to keep us going for the next couple of days until we reached Cairns. I didn't want to overstock the fridge as on reaching Cairns it would have to be emptied, cleaned ready to be put into storage so there was no point! Planning is paramount for the next big trip. Shopping done, so time to hit the highway to find a stop for the night.

Daniel with head in the Camps 5 decided that the night's stop would be Saunders Beach. About three in the afternoon, so normally you would expect that a lot of caravaners would have already pulled over for the night's stop so the concern was would there be any room enough for us. We headed to Saunders Beach arriving around 3.30 to find that the place was 'chockers'. No where to park but having arrived I said that we should at least get out to have a look at the beach. We ventured up to the beach returning to the car deciding that since there was no real room we should probably head off to the next stop at Bluewater Creek.

I loved Cardwell......Hinchinbrook Island just behind me!

As we're climbing into the car we look behind us and a familiar face comes out from behind. Well blow us over but it was Gerry and Gwen, whom we first met in NSW before catching up again in Darwin! Well we just laughed, how uncanny that was to meet at this stopover for the night! We had a great 'happy hour' catching up with we're we'd each been since we last met and where we were all heading for.

Next day time for another good-bye to meet again somewhere on another highway in another state. The road good, with roadworks in the Tully area making way for new highways to be travelled in our future trips. Again with the Camps 5 in hand the nights stopover would be at Mission Beach. Both Tully and Mission Beach had been hit by Cyclone Yassi in March earlier this year. The damage was pretty obvious in the landscape. Trees had been lopped, some houses suffering all sorts of damage. Arriving at the caravan park for the night we topped up on power, water before heading for a long walk along the foreshore of Mission Beach. Dunk Island could be seen from the mainland. There had been a lot of foreshore destruction of the palms with some of the beach taken back. Earlier in the day we'd stopped for a short break at Cardwell where we'd collected most of our information for the far North Tropical QLD including Cape York. Making phone contact with Stew and Les we let them know that we would be catching up with them tomorrow in Cairns. We were now both getting excited. After our huge walk we both sat down to muse through the information, which was huge! and before I knew it I was making lists for this, that and everything else! Looking forward to cathcing up with Stew and Les to get our supplies organised!