It rained all night and was still raining when we got up. There was a sign by the amenities block warning that this is cassowary territory and not to feed them. The lady at reception had told me that cassowaries had been seen in the caravan park and to give them a wide berth. They are notoriously aggressive birds and should be treated with caution. She told me that a cassowary had killed a dog that lived over the road from the caravan park. The dog was pierced by the birds sharp and dagger like claws! After brekky we hit the road and drove the short distance to the town of Tully to have a look at the big gumboot. There is a spiral staircase in the middle of it and a viewing platform at the top of the boot. When we got there it had just stopped raining but it was busy at the boot. There were loads of people wanting to go up it. We just bided our time and people watched waiting for a quiet moment. Two backpackers had just rocked up before us in a tatty old van and they joined the throng to go up the gumboot. The lad had this offensive looking awful straw hat. His girlfriend who had the remnants of a thousand Mars bars on her thighs musn't have told him that he looked like a d*** but was probably thinking it by the look on her face. Anyhow with a bit of patience we eventually got the gumboot to ourselves for a short while. I went to the top and took in the view of a wet looking Tully. The height of the gumboot represents Tully's highest recorded annual rainfall of 7.93 metres in 1950. Just after I came down from the boot it started raining again and with some ferocity now. We left Tully hoping to leave the rain behind but we didn't. The rain was relentless. We decided to go and have a look at Mission Beach. The road there was lined with the usual fields of sugar cane and the occasional banana plantation. We were on the lookout for cassowaries as Lonely Planet states that you're most likely to see them around Mission Beach. There were lots of road signs on the approach warning of cassowaries crossing the road and not to speed. As is usual here the Aussies choose to ignore the speed limit and drive like impatient demonic entities with no thought of killing a cassowary. They are an endangered species with only about 1000 left so they should be given some respect. Just after one such entity overtook us at high speed they appeared to slam on their brakes. We could see a black shape darting about at the side of the road with a blue flash around it's neck. We drove up carefully and saw that it was a cassowary. It was obviously freaked and panicked by the k*** in front and we hoped that it would be okay. We got the best photo we could and drove on carefully. Mission Beach when we got there was extremely wet and didn't look like the tropical paradise that the guide book photos show it to be. It was too wet to get out of the camper. We took a photo of the rain swept beach and moved on. This was a shame as it looked like a really lovely place. We drove a bit further along the coast to Kurrimine Beach which was plan B. When we got here it had stopped raining. There was a caravan park on the beach front but for some reason we had a bad vibe about it. We were just driving away when the bad vibe made sense. Suddenly a tatty camper appeared containing the girl with the Mars bar thighs and the guy in the offensive hat! This was a very lucky escape. We would have probably ended up camped next to them! We did however stop here for the loo. The beach front had numerous warning signs for stingers, crocs and cassowaries. If confronted by a cassowary the advice is to hide behind a tree and protect yourself with a back pack, in effect a shield to stop it's claws from piercing you. I took note of where the trees were. The sign also said:- 'Just like us, a bad diet can harm cassowaries'. Cassowaries are healthy with a natural diet and this is how it should be. Sugar would kill cassowaries in the same way that it eventually kills humans. Plan C was now put into action. We drove to Innisfail and found a caravan park here. We found a lovely quiet site which had the bonus of having a brilliant swimming pool. I went for a lovely refreshing swim and we chilled out for the rest of the day. By evening it had started raining again, torrential style again.