Rainforests and boats and planes

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I'd scheduled a modest agenda for Mission Beach that included white-water rafting, a skydive, and cassowary-spotting. I'd elected to stay at The Sanctuary, an eco-resort offering shared huts with green mesh walls as accommodation, set in acres of rainforest. It wasn't the most convenient location, with the twice-daily shuttle being the only practicable option for getting to Mission Beach itself, and the complex was set on a hillside, requiring much huffing and puffing in the steamy atmosphere to get from A to B, but it was extremely relaxing, partly due to the environment and partly due to the friendly and laid-back staff.

My main reason for staying there was in the hope of seeing a cassowary in the wild. With the roads in the area having probably more cassowary warning signs than anything to do with the Highway Code, it seemed like a prime spot. Though there are various reasons why there are only ~2,000 cassowaries in the wild in Australia, it's impossible for drivers to forget the danger they pose to the birds, as they're constantly reminded of it.

Several times during my stay, I trudged around the grounds but with no luck. Mornings were apparently the best time to look, but they also offered the chance of collecting cobwebs on my head as I followed the narrow paths through the rainforest, an activity that has an extra frisson in Australia due to the selection of venomous spiders that could end up in your hair.

It was only on my last morning that I saw something but it was neither a cute striped chick nor an arresting blue-headed adult - rather a subadult carefully crossing the road and at such a distance that it still looked small even through my x12 zoom.

My first sporting endeavour was the skydive, a tandem (i.e. attached to an instructor) from 14,000 feet (i.e. nearly half the height of Everest) including 1 minute of freefall and a landing on Mission Beach itself - supposedly the best drop zone in Australia. Unfortunately there was a snag early on - all 3 people in my group wanted to have a DVD shot of their jump, which required 3 cameramen but there were only 2 available. The other 2 customers refused to even have a coin toss to determine which of us wouldn't have the cameraman. Faced with this impasse and no prospect of a compromise from anyone, I volunteered to postpone my jump to a subsequent date, which not only would waste a day of my holiday but would run the risk of bad weather delaying my jump even more (they'd cancelled the last couple of days' dives for that very reason). For my sacrifice, I received not a word of thanks from either the other customers or the skydiving company, which left me less than impressed with both.

And so it was that 2 days later at 8AM I was bundled into a Cessna with my dive instructor (veteran of 6,500 jumps) and cameraman after about 2 minutes of training (essentially you need to arch your back, legs, and neck to ensure maximum stability for the freefall). It took about 20 minutes to get up to the drop height, during which at various points I made comments to the camera that were neither interesting, intelligent, nor witty.

I'd felt significantly more nervous before scuba diving, and that hadn't resulted in a watery grave, so I had a good feeling about the jump. That evaporated somewhat when the door to the plane was opened, the cameraman climbed out and hung off the wing, and I heard myself being told to put both my feet next to each other on the wheel strut, with the wind buffetting and roaring, and the earth looking every inch of its 14,000 feet away.

I crossed my arms over my chest, arched my neck, and then we were spinning away from the plane at an alarming speed. The coldness of the air, the rushing in my ears, and the sensation of falling may possibly have caused an obscenity or 2 to issue forth from my mouth. Maybe even a scream. But it was a fantastic feeling, and with the cameraman smiling encouragingly as I mugged for him, I stopped worrying about the (minimal) risk of what I was doing and simply enjoyed the ride. It's not every day that you get to fall through, and taste, cloud.

After 60 seconds the instructor deployed the chute, which felt as though we were catapulted upwards again. The cameraman disappeared below us, making for the landing site in order to film our descent. This phase of the dive was a complete contrast to the freefall, with a silence coming over us and Mission Beach visible in a stunning panorama below. The instructor flung us through some spirals and tight turns that made me feel a little nauseous but I was buzzing. Even dangling there in the harness I could feel my legs trembling. The detail of the beach became clearer as we swooped down in the morning sun, and suddenly the instructor was telling me to lift my legs for the landing. We touched down gently, and I babbled some more drivel to the camera before thanking the guys and trudging off to the minibus for the lift home.

I had to have a nap when I got back to The Sanctuary as I felt so spent, but for the rest of the day I was back on a high. Definitely the most exciting sporting experience I've ever had. I'd been worried about looking scared on the DVD but in fact I should have been more concerned about looking like an idiot - not sure whether an apparently fearless idiot is a better look than a scared, but normal, person.

The white-water rafting took place on the Tully River, apparently one of the best places in Australia for this activity (and close to the main set of banana plantations that were devastated by Cyclone Larry earlier in the year - we saw storm damage in the gorge). On the way to the rafting we passed an adult male cassowary in the roadside forest, its blue head and black feathered body an amazing sight. Unfortunately this was to be my only adult cassowary spot of my stay in Mission Beach.

I chose the Raging Thunder Xtreme Team option (their name, not mine), which meant smaller groups (3 boats of 6 people) and hence more rapids to run. The rapid gradings went up to Grade 4, which is as high as you should go without decent experience (I'd been once before in Japan but it was quite tame).

The guides were rather irritating, with a gung ho spirit and constant stream of racist/sexist/unfunny jokes that started to grate after about 5 seconds, not to mention deliberately flipping the rafts to soak everyone. The best bit of humour occurred when our guide told us to look for koala bears in the treetops bordering the river - as intended, this meant we were completely unprepared when, 2 seconds later, we plunged over a small waterfall.

With the river running high, the rapids were all exciting, and we received regular drenchings and nearly lost members of the group on several occasions. During one of these incidents, the guy in front of me elbowed me extremely hard in the nose, making a crunching sound that people heard even above the rushing of the river, and which brought tears to my eyes. Not the least painful thing that's ever happened to me, but I don't think it was broken. After each rapid we raised our paddles in salute, shouted our obscene team chant, and slapped the river hard to show it who was boss.

Apart from the rafting, we also did a 4m rock jump into the river, and a rough swim through some rapids that left everyone choking on water - one person had to be reeled in on a rope.

My departure from Mission Beach made me a member of the Brotherhood of the Greyhound again - my journey south will be made predominantly by bus.

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Photos

White-water rafting
L to R: Bazz, Lisa, Mar, me, Will, Steve, Scott

White-water rafting
L to R: Bazz, Mar, Lisa, me, Will, Scott, Steve

White-water rafting
L to R: Bazz, Mar, Lisa, me, Scott, Will, Steve (under water)

White-water rafting
L to R: hardly worth distinguishing

White-water rafting
L to R: Bazz, Lisa, Mar, me, Will (exiting), Steve, Scott

White-water rafting
L to R: water, paddle, people, water

Toad
One of 7 gazillion outside my hut