Yesterday we had gone north on the Captain Cook Highway, today we went south from Cairns on the Bruce Highway – which sounds much more Australian.
We have hired a car for 8 days and plan to travel to Brisbane in five segments of around 350 kms each – so today the plan was to travel from Cairns to Townsville ‘the capital of Northern Queensland’ – a 5 hour drive but with chance to call in on other places on the way.
So we called in it Mission Beach which was about 120 kms south of Cairns – a coastal strip with adjoining rain forest. We managed a 3 km track through the rain forest to the top of a local hill from which we had spectacular views, although Jean was convinced that she was going to step in a snake with every stride. Lots of rain forest, but not much visible wildlife apart from this frog.
There was much new tourist development and we visited an exhibition put on by the local environmentalists who
were campaigning to ensure that there was no erosion of the agreed boundaries for the national park (rang bells from India) – and for the cassowaries in particular which are under serious threat. They were running a nursery of trees grown from cassowary poo to ensure that they had the right food supply.
We have hired a car for 8 days and plan to travel to Brisbane in five segments of around 350 kms each – so today the plan was to travel from Cairns to Townsville ‘the capital of Northern Queensland’ – a 5 hour drive but with chance to call in on other places on the way.
So we called in it Mission Beach which was about 120 kms south of Cairns – a coastal strip with adjoining rain forest. We managed a 3 km track through the rain forest to the top of a local hill from which we had spectacular views, although Jean was convinced that she was going to step in a snake with every stride. Lots of rain forest, but not much visible wildlife apart from this frog.
There was much new tourist development and we visited an exhibition put on by the local environmentalists who
were campaigning to ensure that there was no erosion of the agreed boundaries for the national park (rang bells from India) – and for the cassowaries in particular which are under serious threat. They were running a nursery of trees grown from cassowary poo to ensure that they had the right food supply. 
We drove south again and went up into the rain forest and 20 kms into the hills to a place called Paluma – nearly 3000 ft up which is close to the highest point in Australia – the butterflies on the way were amazing and at the top there was really dense rain forest. But then the rain came down in torrents…and we headed for our hotel.
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