MIssion Beach and Tully
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Mission Beach,
Australia
Friday, October 19, 2007
We arrived in Mission Beach a couple of days ago....left our bloody hats on the bus. The lady at the backpackers has organised for the hats to be put back on a bus up to Airlie Beach in a couple of days and we'll collect them when they arrive. She was an absolute doll.... We highly recommend Absolute backpackers if you are every staying in the area.
So Mission Beach is a really small quiet beach side village. If you blink driving through you'll miss it! It looks very much like it belongs on the north shore of Hawaii.
When we arrived we decided to take a walk down the beach into the main part of town, suddenly the heavens opened and we were stuck in the middle of nowhere with no shelter!!! We tried to hide under a tree overhang, but they were all full of spiders. Looking very sorry for ourselves we thought a passing Ute might stop and pick us up - no such luck he just motored on by. A couple of K's later we passed his house, he was outside washing his boat. The cheeky bugger had the gall to wave at us, "lovely day"! We'll give him lovely day!
One of the only dodgy things about Mission Beach is the Cassowaries that live here. For some reason they are hell bent on preserving them, but the buggers are vicious. They claw and head butt you with that nobbly thing on their head. We had a bit of a scare when something came rushing through the undergrowth.... Turns out it was only a bush turkey. Gave us a fright though!
There is approximately 1 pub in town and a handful of coffee and craft shops. The pub was guarded by possibly the cutest dog on the planet. It was a little Jack Russell, about the size of my hand. Say "Aaawwwww"
Today we went river rafting at Tully (Officially the wettest town in Australia...8m of rain per year(!) and they are very proud of that, to the point of cheating in dryer years by topping up the meter!!).
Rafting was so much fun. It's just about into the wet season, so the rapids were flowing hard. We rode rapids graded 1 through to 4 plus - 6 being deemed un-raftable! We managed to get through it relatively unscathed. Only falling out of the raft once... on purpose. We were all sat up one end and he sent us down backwards, so when we hit the bottom we all flew in our own direction! We also had a go at body surfing the smaller rapids, assuming the "white water position" (feet up, feet first). By the end of it we were up for anything and the guide decided to through in a few gnarly rides for us. Awesome!
Tonight we will catch the Greyhound to Townsville, due in about half past midnight... fun!
