Mission Beach was a complete wash out, we left Port Douglas around 9am on Thursday and first headed north to Mossman, we were going to walk to the gorge but it was beginning to rain so we stocked upon supplies and headed south.
We drove the 200kms south to Mission Beach in torrential rain and arrived in torrential rain, in fact it probably got heavier and coupled with the gale force winds we were left wondering if we were in Australia or back in England?! The highlight of the day in Mission Beach was a sighting of a couple of Cassowary, large emu looking birds, casually walking down the road, that and the power cut, caused by a fallen tree! The wind and rain never stopped and we left on Friday morning hoping Townsville would be a little drier and less windy.
We managed some lunch on the beach when we reached Townsville, but the bad luck seems to follow us as it took us nearly 2 hours, due to road works and diversions, to find Magnetic Gateway Holiday Village, our stop for a couple of nights.
Today has been much better, we drove into the city and wandered around for a few hours, we took a trip into the museum of tropical Queensland, which has an exhibit of the Pandora, a British naval ship which sunk on the barrier reef in 1790 after sailing over to find the mutineers from the Bounty and to take the ship home.
Tomorrow we are hoping to get the ferry to Magnetic Island to spend the day there before starting the next part of the journey towards Airlie Beach and our Whitsundays cruise.