Blogs from Mission Beach, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 5

Not much to say except we all jumped out of a plane 14,000ft, 65 seconds of freefall at 200km/h over Mission Beach, Australia's highest skydive!... read more

Hellooooo everyone! So this is an update from our time at Mission Beach, and by the title I'm sure you can guess it was an exciting couple of days. We bussed up from Magnetic Island and arrived in Mission Beach about 4 hours later. As a side note, we ate the most delicious pies at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere! Mission Beach is a very small town that is currently putting itself on the map as a tourist destination by offering cheap whitewater rafting and skydiving. It also boasts excellent hostels with high reviews. We chose Scottys and weren't disappointed. On our first night we ate at a proper restaurant, which was a nice treat. There were candles on the table, nice views from the patio, and thankfully $10 pizza specials. Then we ... read more

Day 1: Cairns to Mission Beach via Wooroonooran National Park With 7 days left in Queensland, we hired a campervan to take us all the way to Brisbane in order to see as much as possible of this varied coastline. Our intention was to visit a few of the many national parks, ‘camping’ along the way, and sticking to small sites and towns where possible. Our small van was equipped with the basics; a double bed (which retracts into a bench), water supply, pump sink, portable two burner stove, esky, table and chairs. After stocking up on food and ice, we gathered a few maps and hit the road to start our 1700 kilometre journey. Our first stop was Josephine Falls, a waterfall with natural swimming pools in Wooroonooran National Park (yes, that’s how it is ... read more

After 2/3 hours on the bus, we arrived at Mission Beach in boiling hot sunshine. It had rained on and off while we had been in Cairns (as it is the tropical wet season at the moment in the north of australia) but as nice as it was to be dry, the humidity was just as intense as Asia, with it being so close to the equator still. Our hostel was about 30 metres from the beach and luckily had air-conditioning. We spent the first day just walking and relaxing on the beach and were astounded how empty it was - we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. Mission Beach itself was really small, literally just a village by the beach. This was nice as we felt like we were experiencing rural australia a ... read more

Townsville = Dullsville Jan 26th - Jan 28th Now to be fair to Townsville it may be a completely different place when it isn't in the midst of a torrential downpour but we found it to be deserted, tired and rundown looking with a lot of empty shops and a large population of drunks on the street. Our stay coincided with the rains from Cyclone Olga. This was rain unlike we had seen before. It was coming down in sheets and rivers were running down the streets. It was relentless. The waterproofs (last seen back in November at Mount Gambier) were back out and we got drenched from the waist down going to the supermarket to get supplies. We arrived in Townsville on Australia Day and were expecting to join in the festivities but we could ... read more