Mission Beach III

Friday was a beautiful sunny and warm day. After breakfast we went for a very long walk along the beach. Firstly, we checked our sand castle from Thursday and it was still completely intact because the tide didn't come up as high as where we built the sand castle. Tae collected lots of sand dollars while Mike & Stephen kicked the ball, played dinosaurs (including the dinosaur dung game), buried logs in sand, etc... We stopped for coffee and ice cream on the way back at the beachside cafe.

When we got back Tae chatted to Christine who told Tae if we'd walked a little further we would have come to the river...which is populated with crocodiles! Pretty sure we won't be walking that far tomorrow. In summer when they put out the stinger nets crocodiles have been spotted resting on top of the buoys. Christine also told Taemar about cyclone Larry two years ago. The water was two feet deep and she called two of her boys who flew up from Perisher. They carted 40 wheelbarrow loads of coconuts alone out of her yard!

We had lunch at a cafe we hadn't been able to try previously and we really enjoyed the food – Barramundi, chips, salt & pepper squid, salad – beautiful.

In the afternoon we went for a drive back to the rainforest walk. We intended to do the longer 1.3km walk but it was closed for some reason, so we did the shorter walk following Cassowary footprints until we found the eggs. Stephen pretended we were following Velociraptor footprints and he was Nigel Marbury (from Walking with Dinosaurs). We stopped the car a little way along the dirt path back to the main road and we were able to do 100m or so of the longer walk that features a huge number of fan palms. We also went for a drive North to Bingal Bay and arrived at the jetty in time to see the catamaran arrive back from the reef and unload all the people. It's only an hour from Mission Beach to the Reef.

Stephen & Mike played some soccer on the front deck, which they have done every day! Yet again Stephen won, this time the score was 12-5. We were pretty tired in the evening and stayed in for dinner. When we spoke to Bernie next door who spent the day repairing the seat that sits just up from the beach out the front of our house, he told us they were planning a bonfire for Saturday night and we were welcome to join them. Stephen was really excited about this, as were Taemar & Stephen.