Through Tully and into Townsville

We had intended to stay at Tully but after all the rain we'd had in recent weeks, the thought of staying in the wettest town in Australia wasn't at all appealing so we climbed the boot, read about the history and headed towards Townsville!

If you look closesly you can see the boys up the top!

 main street of Tully, see those rain clouds blocking the view of the mountains! It drizzled continuously

Townsville! The iconic 'rock' in the centre of town. Its called Castle Hill and watches over the whole town. Just short of being classified a mountain, rather its a 'monoleith'

Esplanade

 Townsville has an extensive military history and there is still a base there. Not great photos but these Black Hawks flew over us machine guns either side! quite exciting



Mission Beach

 Mission Beach despite the lack of sunshine was beautiful. Small, peaceful coastal town where the beach meets the rainforest. We were lucky enough to be camped right on this beahc. This has been the boys favourite beach. They used coconut shells to dig in the sand, tried many ways to crack a coconut to no avail!, and built shelters using palm tree fronds!

 patterns in the sand made by little crabs when the tides out, its like art work

 biggest spider we've seen so far, we thought approximately 10cm long, the body about 3cm eehhh

 golden orb, the body actually looks gold

At Mission Beach we also went to a talk at the Information Centre on tropical fruits, some only grown in a 30km radius from Mission. You got to sample them all too and we tried about a dozen fruits we'd never even heard of, delicious!

Paronella Park

 This was an amazing place really. Tucked in a little out of the way town south of Cairns, it is the remnants of a modern day castle. Built by a Spanish man in the 1930's whose life dream was to build a castle and so he did! He first made his money from buying, improving and selling sugar cane firms which then funded his project. He also built North Queensland first hydro electric plant which still runs it today. In its hey day it had tennis courts, ball room, refreshment rooms and changing cubicles for swimmers. Its endured floods and fire and cyclones. A family bought it some years back now and are slowly restoring it, even a plan to bring the ballroom back to its former glory. It has a caravan park next door and fees to take the tour through the park include camping fees and a night tour. Very very busy place however and we ended up camping in the car park out front! (photos below)

 Jewel spider, quite unusual and beautiful

 our camp site -thats our car in the right hand corner

 ..and more rain!

there's a croc in there somewhere!

The army got the camoflauge pattern from these pines.. and they're not full grown yet!

Mareeba Rodeo 'yeehaaaa!'

Our last day in Cairns we spent driving across back to the Atherton Tablelands for the day to see our first rodeo! We were very excited and the boys were all geared up ready to mix it up with the best of the cowboys! There was bull riding and calf roping and some of the events were kids as young as Harry..

 There were lots of rodeo clowns too who were actually cowboys in place to help riders off and to safety

 some of the bulls were tough, obstinate buggers and wouldnt leave the ring after their ride!

 cowboys then came in to round 'em up!

 calf roping, go girl!

 not as easy as it looks! this thing twisted and bucked all over the place!

 no country event is complete without woodchopping!

A GREAT DAY!