Tropical North Queensland

 The driver was very informative as we were driving through Townsville and told us all we needed to know about the place! We certainly knew we'd really hit the tropical-ness of Queensland when we stepped off the bus, the humidity was something else, especially after sitting on a nice air conditioned bus. Luckily we no longer had to do long slogs of walks to our hostels after the last few we'd had to do. We hopped on the city loop bus and it dropped us right outside the door of the hostel. As we pulled up, the driver said 'if you don't like it here, I'll be back round in half an hour so you can get back on and go to a different hostel' with a smirk on his face. It was a massive old building, like the layout of a motel with all the doors on the outside onto balcanies. Anyway, when we came to check in the lady at reception couldn't find our booking and faffed about for ages, even though I had the email confirmation, she didn't apologise or anything and made it sound like we'd turned up unannounced. Never mind, we checked in and that was that, good job the bus driver told us about Townsville! Usually at check in you get given maps and lots of info about the town and how to get about. Our room was on the second floor typically, so we had to lug our suitcases up 4 flights of stairs! Luckily a nice guy helped with the 2nd suitcase so Phil didn't have to do all the work. We got to our room and it was like an old mental asylum. White breeze block walls, and hospital looking beds. Still, we had a TV so we couldn't complain! The toilets were pretty dingy too and had no soap. There was a swimming pool on the top floor over looking the city which was cool. There wasn't a huge load to do in Townsville, we had a few things written down but we were so tired so just walked into town really to see what it was like, and I was hoping to come across a Fuji shop to see if they knew what had happened to my camera. I went to the post office and finally posted my postcards, then we just grabbed some food from Woolworths and headed back, didn't find a camera shop. It was so incredibly hot and sticky. We had to dive into the library for some air conditioning to cool off! We got back to the hostel and just relaxed for the evening. We attempted to make dinner, realised there were no pots and pans, Phil went to ask at reception and they said you have to buy cutlery but can 'hire' pots and pans if you leave your room key as a deposit, again, weren't told any of this. We had plastic knives and forks in our room, so that would mean taking the pans back again, to get our key, to get the cutlery and repeat the process. We could not be bothered and neither of us were that hungry so we scrapped dinner and just went to sleep! I slept a good 12 hours, it was much needed.

Rooftop pool over Townsville

 We got up and got our stuff sorted, had a load of toast so we didn't have to fuss about with crockery, and checked out. The city bus didn't come for an hour so we just sat in the courtyard bit and waited. I used some change to get online, sent another scathing email to this Whitsunday cruise palava, and we set off. The bus was on time and we got on our way to Mission Beach. It was only a 3 and a half hour or so journey, we cruised through and reached Mission Beach just after 3.30pm. Luckily I had arranged to be picked up by the hostel because Mission Beach was about 4km from the bus stop! We popped into Woolworths again as the guy did a daily Woolies run for people to get food so we had to pick those guys up. We chatted to them abit on the way home and they said they have seen loads of hunstman spiders and things, so I was feeling edgy about the place! In Mission Beach there is a very rare bird that lives in the rainforest called a cassowary. There are only about 1000 left in the world and they are the size on an emu, but brightly coloured blue and green with the red bits under its chin like a turkey. Their biggest killer is actually cars hitting them, so there are signs everywhere telling you to that they cross the road regularly and so to be wary and slow down. I really wanted to see one but we didn't get to! They can be really aggressive too so you need to be careful if you do see one. Anyway our hostel was alright, it had been hit by cyclone Yasi pretty badly so they'd done well to have it they way they did. It had no windows in the kitchen / lounge area which I didn't know whether was due to the cyclone, or just they way they did things there! The thing is it was right next to the rainforest so there were bugs everywhere. Geckos everywhere too but we like those! The guy on reception didn't really know what he was doing and put us in a dorm room when we'd booked a private room, but we didn't really mind as it was only one night and it was saving us a few dollars. A little while later he came back again realising his mistake and put us in the room we were meant to have. Either way we didn't mind, it was nice to have our own space despite paying the few more dollars. There isn't a massive deal to do at Mission Beach but we just went to the beach in the late afternoon and sat there for ages. It was a really cool beach, lined with coconut trees. There were these funny little crabs everywhere, and we sat and watched one dig a hole. It was very edgy and if we moved it would shoot back down its hole quicker than you could imagine. I managed to get a little movie of it! We were going to paddle in the sea  but there were so many crabs on the sand we just sat and enjoyed the moment. It is too dangerous to go in the sea at Mission Beach because of stingrays and jellyfish. Along the beach there are emergency stinger kits. We went back to our hostel, made some dinner, watched TV for a bit and used some internet and then went to bed.

Mission Beach

The next morning we were up and ready before check out, but our bus wasn't coming until 3.40pm so we were going to need to hang around the hostel for the day. We left our luggage and went down to the beach again. The tide was right in up to the trees, so you couldn't avoid walking along the shore. We wandered further up the way and found a little bench between some trees to see on. Again we sat there a while and and watched the tide start to go out. It was another scorching day, over 30 degrees with so much humidity. We went back to the hostel and ending up watching Friends for about 2 hours. We just couldn't cool off, you are just sat there with sweat dripping down your face, pretty unconfortable. We had a bite to eat for lunch and then looked on the bookshelf / games shelf for something to do! Sat there for a bit and then went into the other TV bit as there was a Playstation but that barely worked. Eventually it was time to leave about 3ish! So we went back to the bus station and waited there, we were a bit early. The guy who took us waited with us and chatted for ages. He was born in England but has lived in Australia for 50 or so years, he had lots of interesting things to say and has really got stuck in with things in the village, and we found out it was him that planted all the coconut trees along the beach 30 years ago. He has been everywhere in Asutralia and has taught aboriginie children English in the Northern Territory. He had a good view on the situation with the aboriginies and wants good thins for them. Not many people will have many positive things to say about them, and another guy that was waiting with his minivan to collect customers off the next coach even made a point of coming over just to interrupt and say 'all they want is money', to which our guy argued against. He went off anyway as the bus was late, and we sat and chatted to the two Italians who were also getting the same bus. The time went quikcly and soon enough we were embarking on our 9th and last Greyhound bus journey! We had the same driver that took us from Rockhampton to Airlie Beach, so we said hello and we sat in our favourite front two seats. He ended up chatting to us for the whole 2 hour journey, about stuff we had no clue about, some if it was interesting, he talked about the banana trees and sugar cane, some of it made us wish we never said hello! And he was getting very distracted, he almost went past a bus stop full of people! Still we made it in one piece, to our final destination up the East coast, to Cairns.

A nice shady spot on Mission Beach