We will miss Paronella Park. We left Paronella Park early morning to hunt down a wild Cassowary. Dad is pretty set on seeing a wild one. He spoke to people at Skywalk and they told him that they knew of some in Etty Bay which is not far away. We drove down to Etty Bay and we ran straight into one. It was a young bird and it was very interested in us. It looked friendly but Dad reminded us how dangerous the birds are. Our Lonely Planet book even reminded us to al...

We said goodbye to Mission Beach today after an amazing day yesterday. Our first reef experience was memorable. First stop today was Ma-mu Tropical Skywalk. The walk allows you to explore the rainforest from the forest floor right to the top of the canopy. What is interesting is that you get to see how the forest has changed thanks to Cyclone Larry and Cyclone Yasi. It was also interesting to understand how the rainforest changed thanks to logging. The 10 metres...

We woke up to rain. Today we were booked on a Barrier Reef snorkelling adventure. So we headed anyway to the dive office expecting our trip may be cancelled. We were surprised to find out our tour was not cancelled. Our tour guide Nancy told us that the rain was coastal and when we got to the outer reef the weather would be different and anyway "the fish were already wet". We first went to Dunk Island to meet our boat and then we headed out to the outer reef. Th...

We started the day with saying Goodbye to Townsville and what better way to do so than from the Castle Hill lookout. You get to see the whole town from there, incredible beautiful views. We then started making our way up to Mission Beach, a pit stop at Lees Hotel - the Pub with no beer. Made famous by one of Slim Dusty's song, which originally was a poem. The background story is the Americans were travelling from Townsville to Cairns and Darwin in 1943 and they ...

Today is Dad's day doing the blog. We heard a lot about "The Strand" from guide books and locals so we thought today we would chill out a bit, do some walking and swimming. The Strand is a decent walk and we loved it, except for our oldest who is not so keen on long walks. There is heaps to do, a small water park, coffee shops and a large rock pool. The rock pool is the best one I have seen, it is more like a man made lagoon. We spent a fair bit of time just sw...