Your Mission...should you to choose to accept it

Well we got on the greyhound dead on time at Cairns. There were a few characters on the bus, as well as Jackie the girl who had been staying in our dorm. There was one true Aussie bloke, with a beer belly, a T-shirt reading 'Australia...if u dont love it leave!' and an attitude to match. He entertained the whole bus with his over loud phone call to his wife, phrases such as "show us ya mush", as well as obscenities, made the journey a little more interesting and colourful than it might have been.

Us at Cardwell

Unfortunately we seemed to have trouble with the bus about half way into the journey and the bus driver pulled over next to a field with no shade in the baking hot sun. He had to turn the engine off to try and fix it, so the bus started to heat up in no time and there was no escaping the heat. After a while and a bit of cursing from the driver, it seemed the bus was fixed. However not much further up the road the bus wouldnt change gears and we ended up stopping at a BP garage.

Mission Beach was hot

Here the driver made us get off and drove off in the bus with our luggage. It was sooo hot!! we got a sandwich from the garage and sat outside with Jackie reading magazines. It felt like ages until we saw the driver again. He was mad!! He said to us are you guys on the bus, cos the bus is waiting for ya!!!

This was clearly a little out of order considering we were sat exactly where he had left us, but we ran to the bus and eventually made it to Mission beach.

We had booked a hostel called Scotty's to stay in at Mission beach. After a wait at the bus stop someone from the hostel picked us up in a mini bus and we checked in. It was a nice hostel with a big pool and ok dorms.

Parachuters land on Mission Beach

Mission beach is a really long sandy beach, but you cant swim in the sea due to the stingers, unless you have a stinger suit on.  Instead the main attraction on the beach is Skydiving. All along the beach people were doing skydives....yes jumping out of planes. Apparently its really good as the tandem ones have soft landings on the sand.

We watched about five tandem skydivers come in on the beach before going for a swim in the pool. It was so hot in the sun we needed to cool off. (I'm not sure if I've mentioned how hot it is much!!)

That night we ate in Scotty's bar, and had once again an enormous ozzie meal each....something that isnt doing either of our waistlines much good.

Cardwell truck stop

As there really isn't much at mission beach except the skydiving (something Mark wants to do in New Zealand not Oz) we only stayed one night before moving on to Magnetic Island, further down the east coast.

Love Theresa and Mark xxx