Photos from my year Down Under
I was supposed to spend all day today sea kayaking, but the weather was not working properly so the trip had to be cancelled. With no way of getting around (no buses in Mission Beach) I spent most of the day in the hostel with this book. I also made use of the tv room anytime anyone put a film on. Maybe not the most thrilling or productive day, but the sofa in that tv room is really comfortable!
No photos of my main trip today, so here’s another photo of the beach, which is where I started. All of the grey pebbles here seem to be little pieces of dead coral. Anyway, so a little bit further along this beach is a water taxi taking people from the mainland to Dunk Island, about 10 minutes offshore. This island is all either National Park or resort, although the resort was mostly destroyed in the cyclone a few years ago so is in a bit of a sorry state. I walked a loop of the island, which took around 3 hours, and went down to one of the more accessible beaches (Muggy Muggy Beach), and encountered a snake, lots of birds and lizards, had a large spider (possibly a Coastal Golden Orb Weaver) on my head, and saw what was either a baby shark or just quite a big normal grey fish.
As I have been waking up really early still, I decided to walk from Wongaling to the bit of town that is actually called Mission Beach, which is about 5km from the hostel. So here is a photo of me at about 8am, on a proper palm-fringed, white-sand beach. Mission Beach is really tiny, but friendly, and they make a very good iced chocolate. On the walk there I saw a wild cassowary, which was somewhat unexpected, luckily from a good distance as I think a disembowelment would somewhat ruin my day. On the way back I encountered a group of very happy bikers, waving and yelling Merry Christmas, including the one who was even dressed as Father Christmas and had covered his bike in tinsel.
The morning of day seven was spent trying to figure out how to fit all of my belongings back into my rucksack and finding the Greyhound bus stop. After about two hours of travelling I was at Mission Beach, which has to be the most beautiful place I’ve found in Australia so far.
Tales from Australia 