September 22-23
We left Cairns to head south on the 22nd, starting our drive through Borneo, wait I mean Queensland. Cane and banana plantations lined the roads all the way to Kirrumine Beach, our next stop, and would for most of our drive down to Brisbane. We pulled in to find a tiny, quiet town by the sea just north of the louder Mission Beach. The average age of this town was far and above what we expected, and the owners of the caravan park seemed both surprised and delighted to have our youthfulness around, though the other campers did not seem as excited. The woman working the front desk was extremely helpful with any questions we had, and even set me up/pointed me in the right direction for some fishing in the morning, though I didn't do any good. We hit the beach for the last few hours of sunlight considering it was the first beach we had been to thus far. We soon reverted to primitive tactics, throwing rocks and old coconuts at the tempting green ones hanging in the trees. We finally dislodged one and spent the better part of an hour working towards its delicious center, which we barely touched by the time we had accessed it. That night we watched Finding Nemo, probably because of our reef trip, as Cane toads hopped around and geckos echoed from the rafters and bathroom stalls. We went to set up camp and found that the tent that had been given to us, which two of us would have to sleep in beside the camper van each night, had broken tent poles and was utterly useless. We drove an hour round trip back to the nearest grocery store and grabbed the cheapest, tackiest tent I have ever seen to make due with.
In the morning we woke early to drive Hughesy to a free rafting trip on the Tully River that he had won in Cairns. On the drive back, I decided to take the long way to drive through Mission Beach, the self-proclaimed capital of the Cassowary Coast. For those of you who don't know, the cassowary is a large, flightless bird. Really it is the only remaining velociraptor. The thing is big, fast, and has a huge razor sharp claw on its middle toe. I was hoping to see one on the 50 km detour I took, but all I saw was this large replica (below) and about 200 road signs warning of cassowary crossing and how speeding kills cassowaries. In fact, I probably would have seen one of these magnificent beasts if I wasn't distracted by the multitude of signs. My favorite was one that read, "Do not feed the cassowaries," and I realized I had no shot anyway since I had not brought any small children or Jurassic Park characters with me.
After packing up camp and spending a few more hours on the beach with intermittent rains, we hauled back down to Tully and into the rainforest. On our drive along the river towards a seemingly nonexistent boat ramp/park area, we were lucky enough to see a German Shepherd-sized wild boar and its offspring, but they both hurled themselves back into the brush before a camera could be pulled out. We finally found the boat ramp and quickly dove into a nice swimming hole to avoid the vicious swamp flies that were swarming our unprotected skin. Apparently these flies have just a week-long lifespan and hatch only once a year. Thank god we were lucky enough to time our trip to this hatch.
After finding Hughesy back in town, I stumbled upon the best fish and chips I have ever had. This took me back considering we had been by the ocean our entire trip, and it was only was we ventured some 30-odd km inland that I found such a treasure. We loaded up the van and prepared for our drive down to Townsville and the hyped Magnetic Island full-moon beach party.
On a side note, Greg and Hughesy's terrible sunburns brought me to an interesting realization about Australia. When early human forms migrated out of Africa and into new parts of the world such as Europe and Asia, selection led us to having lighter skin because we still needed to absorb some UV rays to synthesize vitamin D in our bodies in new, lower light intensity environments. This means that by Europeans moving back to the tropics (Australia, where the sun is incredibly intense because not only is it closer to the equator but because the ozone layer here sucks), they essentially stepped backwards in the evolutionary timeline. No wonder this place has the highest rate of skin cancer, it's not just the ozone depletion.
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