Mission Beach

So this is our new home for the next month. We picked her up yesterday (why are vehicles female?) with some trepidation as we have LOTS of luggage and she looked kind of small. We jammed everything in as best we could and took off south, stopping at Mission Beach, about 150 km out of Cairns. Imagine the most beautiful tropical beach, with swaying palm trees, golden sand, blue sky and gentle waves - that’s Mission Beach. Now imagine the same scene with a question mark over the ocean. Why are there no people swimming? Because if you swim in the open ocean on this coast, you are likely to come face to face (or face to tentacle) with a box jelly fish which (as my children know!!) is lethally poisonous. So - all that beautiful ocean and you can’t go in. Actually, they have areas netted off where you can go, but they are quite small and somehow it’s not quite the same. Anyway, we did take advantage of the sand and the ambience and stretched out for a snooze (and yes, we did go swimming inside the net).
We found a really nice campground and discovered that with a bit of ingenuity (and some cramming) we could get all our stuff nicely stowed away in the van. There are lots of cupboards and hidey-holes and we looked in all of them, but couldn’t find the sheets and towels that we had been promised. We had actually bought some towels for our previous camping trips, but had to rent sheets from the campground. The van is actually much roomier than it looked at first glance, and we are already quite fond of her. The trip to Mission Beach was something of an eye-opener. We assumed that the main highway down the east coast would be at least a 4-lane deal - but no. It’s single lane (both ways) nearly all the way with the occasional very short over-taking lane. It’s quite un-nerving to be driving at the speed limit with a huge great truck right on your back bumper - those guys really like to move! When we could, we pulled over so they could pass, but sometimes we had to go quite a way before ir was safe to pull off the road. Also, there are regular road works (apparently they are “improving” the road) - often we had to wait while oncoming traffic came through, so it took us much longer than we had anticipated.
Our next door neighbours at the campsite were a really nice couple from Perth - Deb and Ray. We had a really good visit with them and joined them for supper. Deb is an OT (Occupational Therapist) so no wonder we got along so well!
The camper was really comfortable and we were woken up at some ungodly hour by kookaburras laughing - which I guess is as good a way as I can think of to get woken up! We ate breakfast watching swarms of huge, iridescent green beetles buzzing around in the palm trees - pretty nice start to the day!
We drove to Townsville today and hope to get to Airlie Beach tomorrow where we’ll probably stay for a few days - we’re going to try to go sailing/snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. Not sure if we will be able to dive - I did enquire about diving when we were in Cairns, but Queensland is apparently quite strict about your medical status (good thing!) and John would have had to have a medical to say that his pacemaker was OK for him to dive with. So diving may be out - at least for the time being.