What a Mission. (beach)

We headed down the coast a few more hours, to arrive at Mission Beach. Another pretty, but deserted beach. Its such a git to have these really nice places that you just can't use properly because of a little tiny thumb sized Jellyfish. Admitedly there could be thousands of them, but thats not the point. Good old australia! It probably wouldn't be quite as much fun if so much stuff wasn't trying to kill you all the time.

The hostel we stayed at "mission beach shack" was just like a house. A very big house, but it was cool. Big lounge with Telstar TV (like Sky) so we could watch Rugby League and Aussie Rules for ever if the need arose. Luckily it didn't. Not such a big fan of League.

We didn't do an awful lot in Misison Beach, mainly because there wasn't much to do. We did hear though that the walking tracks further inland were nice, and well worth a trek. So thats what we did.

On the Map (which admitedly did say "not to scale" in relatively large writing) the start of the trail looked about a km away, so we thought we'd give it ago.

Half an hour later, we'd made it through the town and we thought we were well on our way, until a nice chap in a 4wd pulls up next to us and asks if we need a lift

"nah it's alright we say, we're just heading for the walking track, looks like it's just around this corner so we should be ok ta"

"well the closest walking track to here is another 6km away"

"ah." "is it worth the walk?"

"well its a nice walk through the rainforest, but i'll drive you up there, then you can see how far it is for you to walk back"

"if you're sure, that'd be great"

So we hopped in. turns out that this guy often see's people making the same mistake as us and regulary gives them lifts to the trail.

On the way too saw 4 cassowaries (the 4th largest bird in the world after Big Bird, The osterich and an Emu), a Daddy one and 3 babies which is very very rare apparently. What a start to the walk!

We arrived at the start of the walk, and admitedly the car journey had taken 15 mins so we prayed that someone would be finishing at the same time so we wouldn't have to walk back.

The walk itself was one of the most uncomfortable walks i've ever had the misfortune of doing! One thing the car guy didn't tell us was that we might have needed some insect repellant.

1.1km and over 200 bites between us later we emerged hot and stressed from the jungle. (I had over 150 on my back alone!)

Bugger... No cars.

Looks like a long walk home.

It's alright I thought, looking at the map it's only a bit of a walk, NO map can be THAT out of scale!!

Probably 2 hours later we reached the first junction on the rubbishy stupid map.

Strange noises were coming from the Jungle, and even stranger ones coming from Jem walking/trudging behind me. All I can say is I'm glad we had our walking shoes on.

It took us 30 minutes to do the hellish jungle walk, then another 4.25 to walk back into town. The distance it looked on the map was laughable, and the distance we had walked was painful. But looking back it was good experience. just about!

To make it worse though, we think we may have picked up the dreaded BEDBUGS somewhere down the line! ARGH NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

We got the bus out of Mission the next morning, to head down to Townsville.

Read the next chapter, coming soon!

Stay safe, but most of all, stay classy.

Lots of Love

Si and Jem