Heading down the mountains from the Atherton Table lands we stopped at Paronella Park. The entrance price includes a night of camping and entrance to the park at night as well as a return entrance for the next two years. Although the park has won some tourism awards and sounded pretty interesting as we had already booked (and paid) for our accommodation for that night we found the price a bit too much for our pocket so kept rolling towards Mission Beach.
We arrived around lunchtime and checked in at Wongaling Beach, just south of Mission Beach.
First we went to see the ‘Big Cassowary’. It is located outside the local shopping centre. We’d seen signs to be on the lookout for the elusive cassowary since we were in Cooktown but had yet to see any. We were hopeful that we might spot one in Mission Beach. Despite plenty of other people posting photos on social media of the cassowary in the area we weren’t lucky enough to see one.
Next we headed into the town of Mission Beach. It is a fairly quite seaside town, but there are a few cafes, bars and shops in town to keep us busy browsing for a while.
We took a walk on the beach – a giant expanse of white sand fringed with palm trees with views across the water to Dunk Island.
The next day we took drive and checked out the other beaches in the area. Each one picture perfect. There is a small campsite right on the beach at Kurrine Beach that looked like a great place to stay.
We stopped off at Bingil Bay and wandered out on the jetty. There were a few people fishing, but they hadn’t had much luck. We watched a bloke out on the water fishing off a kayak for a while when a dolphin started swimming around and appeared to be playing.
We spent a few hours at the main beach before having a couple of drinks in ‘The Shrubbery’ and heading back to camp. Later that night we noticed that our friend Jo had written a post on Facebook and the location showed her to be Mission Beach. A few phone calls we discovered she was in fact staying at Wongaling while travelling for work! She had an early start the next morning so we quickly walked up the road to where she was staying and had a drink with her. Of all the places we never expected to run into anyone at Wongaling Beach!
Hit The Toad 
[…] day was Saturday and the AFL grand final. We met up with our friends Jo (who we’d run into in Mission Beach), Gos and Rachel at the Eagle Street Pier. We enjoyed the sunshine and a few drinks at one of the […]