Saturday 20th
Mission beach, the dream!

We got up early so we weren't caught camping slightly illegally and set off to mission beach. On the way we stopped off and ate our breakfast with a view over the sea, it was beautifully calm and on such a hot day it was very inviting, this was until we saw the 'do not feed the crocodiles' signs. Once we looked properly in the water we could see lots of croc heads popping up for air. We saw about 5 in 15 minutes, Yep defiantly not somewhere for swimming! We made it to mission beach and although we didn't need to power up we took advantage of a lovely campsite right on the beach front for quite cheap. The powered sites where the second row in from the beach but both this row and the front row where empty so we were pretty confident nobody would park in front of us and spoil our view. We parked up and went for a walk along yet another stunning Australian beach. It was a sizzling day without a cloud in the sky, we decided after a busy weekend (on a tour of the Whitsunday's, poor us) we would just relax on the beach that day. The sand was so hot you had to run from the shade to the sea so that's where we headed. We were a bit nervous about swimming in the sea being not too far away from where we had seen all the crocs but we were pleased to see a netted off part. Apparently the biggest cause of injury swimming here is the box jelly fish, which can be deadly, seriously everything in Australia wants to kill you! Anyway the sea was lovely, the water temperature was almost exactly the same as the air temp (35'C) and we found ourselves seeking out the cooler, deeper bits in an attempt to cool down. After a few hours of pure relaxation we headed back to Kylie to shower up and make dinner. To our astonishment we found someone had arrived and chosen not the 5 empty parking spaces that wouldn't block anyone's view but the spot directly in front of us! We made a bit of show of loudly moving our camper just one place along, blimin typical. We quickly forgot our annoyance by drinking sangria and having another BBQ. After dinner we took the bottle of white we had been saving since the vineyard in hunters valley and walked the 10 steps to the beach. We spent the evening sat on our deck chairs drinking wonderfully chilled delicious white wine and again talking about everything and anything. Living the dream!

Sunday 21st Feb
We woke up to a beautiful sunrise over the sea, another tick, watching the sunrise from bed! After breaky we started our drive to Port Douglas, the most northerly part of our journey. We arrived at about 15.30 and were hot and in need of a sea breeze, we headed straight to the beach for a swim. When we got there we were pleased to see the now familiar 'safe netted' area, we were heading towards it when we were stopped by a life guard saying that the density of jelly fish was too high, the smaller ones had managed to get through the net and there had been a lot of people stung in the last few days, the sea is essentially closed! Instead we grabbed our camp chairs from Kylie and chilled on the beach for a few hours, it was very similar to mission beach with mountains framing the edges of the beach. In the evening we hit the pub for a game of pool and some drinkies....well deserved we figured after the drive and not being able to swim. We found a free camp site to stay at that turned out to be flippin miles away up through a mountainous road once we got there we were greeted with the now familiar sound of the kukooburra, and settled down for the night.