Townsville & Cairns via Mission Beach July 2024
We arrived in Townsville on the 29th of June and stayed until 2 July. Our caravan site (Coral Coast Caravan Park) was not in a great location (industrial), but we didn't have to drive to far to reach the waterfront esplanade and other locations.
Next stop was Mission Beach, which was quite nice and relaxing. I even managed to book.myself a message, which was much needed after the many hours of driving!
Our muchly anticipated arrival at the Cairns Tasman Cool Waters caravan park, where we were due to greet Kirstan and Zara off the plane, was a very nice surprise. The van park had a beautiful rainforest and stream running along side it, including turtles and fish.
Ari insisted we invest in some flotation devices to share with the others, and this proved great fun!
We enjoyed checking out Karanda up in the hills - the "Rainforest Market" was very cute and had some very nice eateries.
And of course we had to have a day on the reef. This definitely lived up to expectations by all of us - the abundance of sealife, including a turtle, giant clams, huge variety of tropical fish, and coral was simply fantastic! We also really enjoyed the trip out and back on a large sail boat called "Ocean Free".
While on the reef cruise Ari and myself checked out the crocodile park on Green Island. We found this very interesting how the beginnings were crocodiles that were otherwise destined to be killed in PNG.