Mission Beach

Trip Start Feb 25, 2007
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Trip End Aug 25, 2007


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Flag of Australia  , Queensland,
Thursday, July 24, 2008

A couple of hours driving through rain brought us out in sunshine on Mission Beach, we didn't want to waste it so went straight to the beach and played guitar and frisbee and learnt german songs from Christoph for a good few hours. The beach is beautiful, miles and miles of white sand lined by palm trees and with hardly any people! Views out to sea of Dunk island were good and the sunset (although behind us) lit up the clouds over the sea, twas pretty. We camped in a campsite for a change as in Mission Beach its a little bit more regulated and had proper showers and felt well and truly out of place. Whilst we cooked pasta again over our little stove by the side of the Falcon with bags and guitars strewn across the grass, all those around sniggered from their posh campervans with neat and tide floor mats and lines of shoes and laptops and canopes with wine. It was pretty funny and everyone was very friendly. I think we were in the Aussie over 50s camping site, but this wasn't such a bad thing because the showers were amazing.
The next day I did a skydive over Mission Beach and luckily the weather was perfect for it. It was by far the most exhilerating thing I have ever done. We were taken to a small airfield and 8 of us (four instructors and four travellers) paired up and slotted into the back of this tiny plane. There was a big hole on one side, which you jump out of eventually, and we all had to squeeze up on the floor, basically sitting in each others laps. The flight in this plane was spectacular enough, steadily climbing the views got better and better of Mission beach and the islands below, then we passed through some fine cloud cover. At this point I asked Jason, my instructor how high we were, thinking we must be jumping out soon, he said 3,000 feet, we weren't jumping out until 14,000!
It is ridiculous when I think about it now, we climbed higher and higher and eventually we were there and within a couple of seconds i was sitting in this open hatch with my legs dangling out and then we jumped. 60 seconds of free fall, descending 9,000 feet, it was unbelievable. It seemed like only a few seconds had passed when he let out the parachute, I steered us across the water and swooped around onto the sand.
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