Townsville was just a convenient stopover so we made an early start to head out of the city. The region now becomes much more interesting with lots of national parks . We stopped at a couple of places to walk to waterfalls and look for some exotic wildlife but apart from beautiful butterflies and birds we haven't encountered much. On arriving in Mission Beach we called at the tourist information office for advice on accommodation and we discussed our disappointment at lack of wildlife. The helpful volunteer told us to visit his home street after dark if we wanted to see wallabies. So after settling into another lovely motel with a tropical garden we did the customary walk along the deserted beach and swim in the pool before dinner, we then went out in the dark looking for wallabies. We were not disappointed hundreds of wallabies were hopping around the residential area grazing on the verges.
Mission Beach is a small but very beautiful resort where the rainforest and palm trees fringe the beach which stretches for miles.The sea here looks very inviting and the locals said iit was safe to swim, but there was nobody in the water and if they are worried about the stingers down in Airlie Beach, why aren't they here? We didn't risk it.
Just in case you were wondering about the weather here , we didn't see any clouds today and the daytime temperature has been consistently about 32 degrees everyday so no jumpers needed yet!
In fact since leaving Brisbane the daytime temperature has always been 30 to 33C and once the sun goes down it seems to be 22 to 24 all night. Blue skies all day..........
Queensland doesn't do daylight saving (or change the clocks) so sunrise is probably about 5am and by 6.30pm it is dark. It's a political hot potato with the locals. Schools. Shops and work appear to start at similar times to the UK.
However we think we could cope!