Mission Beach

Day 21 - Mission Beach

Innisfail

Friday, 12 August 2011

Weather-wise another lovely day, bright blue skies and temperatures forecast to be late 20's, slight offshore breeze, Dogger westerly 15 knots. A quiet beach day planned for today. We wandered down to the beach from our accommodation and had a toasted sandwich from a beach cafe and sat on the edge of the beach under the coconut palms. Did you know that more people have been killed by coconuts than by snakes in Australia? In fact the order of dangerous things here from top to bottom goes coconuts, cassowaries, crocodiles, snakes, spiders, sharks. Apparently sharks are actually quite friendly and people often keep them as pets. Just so you don't quote me, I made the last two sentences up but I am told that falling coconuts are responsible for significant mortality.

In fact they have a tree de-nutter out here that strips the trees before the coconuts fall. The tree we were under was loaded with coconuts and when I asked the cafe owner why, she said that there was a big snake in the top of the tree and the de-nutter was too scared to go up there. That's fine then. We ate up and moved on.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach and swimming in the sea. Although we knew we would be safe, and we had been told it was too cold for crocs this time of year (this wasn't entirely convincing as we'd seen them a few miles north of here), I couldn't help feeling a tinge of anxiety and none of us were brave enough to venture out of our depth, which is silly really because I think that a crocodile can get you in a few inches of water. Lizzi, Anna and I spent much of the time working out a strategy if one of us was grabbed. I took some comfort in the fact that we have been told they take the smallest person first and my strategy mainly centred on running away. Of course not. I wouldn't just run away. I would trip one of the girls up first, then run away.

Apparently the Koalas are vicious too and swim in the sea with snorkels and flippers on, but I sometimes think that the locals are making these stories up just to frighten us Poms.

Anyway we had a lovely beachy day and all got a little bit sun kissed.

The beach is about 4 miles long and perfect, but I would be surprised if there were more than 50 people in total on the beach. A bit different from European beaches!

The beach hut cafe had some sand yachts for hire and we hired one to share, but she ended up giving us one each as it was the end of the day. The girls really enjoyed it but the wind had dropped to virtually nothing and we hardly moved. The lady gave us our money back which was kind.

Then......disaster......pause for effect......Leonard was lost!! He had dropped (or maybe jumped) out of Anna's pocket and disappeared on the beach. We spent some time combing the beach and re-tracing our steps and then, to our relief, we discovered him sitting by the edge of a little stream on the beach. We think he might have been claimed by some other children but they had left him and we re-claimed him - hurrah!!

We then headed back to the motel, changed and went out for dinner. I had red snapper which was very nice.

We are moving off tomorrow, probably down to Townsville.

	Rainforest Motel [Map]		Motel room [Map]
	Mission Beach [Map]		Coconuts [Map]
	Beach cafe [Map]		Breakfast [Map]
	Sand Yachts [Map]		Dunk Island at sunset [Map]
	Random horses [Map]

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