Mission Beach

We only stopped at Mission Beach to break up the drive between Agnes Water and Daintree rainforest, we’d been told it was somewhere you can miss but we had the time so might as well!

We stayed at a very cute beach-front campsite in Bingle Bay, which we found on Wiki Camps – only $21/night for the whole van. They only had 8 spots and it was very intimate, the guy that runs it is so sweet.

To kill time we did the Bicton Hill walk in Clump Mountain Nation Park, it was uphill but it only took us 40 mins – online it said it would take 2 hours! Was really nice through the rainforest and as it was raining (again) we didn’t have much else to do.

View of Mission Beach from the top of the walk and Bingle Bay

The next morning we got up quite early and it was absolutely chucking it down. We didn’t even go to see Mission Beach itself, it would have looked terrible in the rain and we just wanted to get out of there.

Daintree Rainforest

When we arrived at Draintree, we were pretty excited. Fran got to go on her first ferry across Daintree River! We stayed at the Safari Lodge which was $10/person (we obviously snuck 2 people in). You get a $5 discount if you have the wiki camps.

Daintree rainforest is amazing – we really love it there. It really does feel like you’re going back in time, it’s over 150 million years old – it was around at the same time as the dinosaurs! It’s so different from the rest of the East Coast and I would highly recommend paying it a visit.

That evening we cooked a lovely meal and then got very drunk. We ended up drinking and playing cards with these two French boys. It wasn’t supposed to be a big night at all, Riss and Gabby go to bed and Christie and I were supposed to be heading back after 1 more glass of wine. However, the next thing we know we’re in the back of some bogans pick-up truck, the French guys were playing their guitar and singing and somehow I’d acquired some sort of maraca!? We were jamming in the back of the car and then suddenly the tire blew. Not just a small hole – the whole tire is ripped to shreds! There was only the metal wheel!

We finally get to this creek and it seems like it’s a staff party!? Why on earth on had we been asked to come and why on earth did we go!? It was a pretty surreal experience. After a couple of hours we finally we got a new tire and could go home, we were so so tired.

The next morning Christie and I woke up and it took us a moment to remember the night before and when we did I accidentally spat my water all over christie’s face!

Our plan for the day was to do some walks through the rainforest, and they did not disappoint. We did 3 short walks: First we went to the Cape Tributional Beach lookout – it was really stunning. The forest rolling into a beach is a very dramatic landscape.

After that we did two walks in the forest; Dubuji and the Marrdji Boardwalks. The trees, leaves, and mangroves were SO nice. I’m normally not very good at appreciating rainforests but this was pretty cool.

The walks

The mangroves were really cool – look at all those roots!

Following the walks we went to the Daintree Ice-cream  Company – this place has a huge orchard and they grow loads of different fruits. With all their fresh fruit they make their own organic ice cream. It’s been voted one of the most scenic places for an ice cream! Once we were suitably full we drove down to Port Douglas.