On through Tully, reputedly one of the wettest towns in Australia, where they measure rainfall in metres. Average annual rainfall is between 4 and 5 metres, but one year they recorded 7.9 metres, and there's a giant gumboot in the main street to prove it!
Mission Beach is off the highway, and although it's quite a nice town, apparently it's not doing well since Cyclone Yasi destroyed two offshore islands, Dunk and Bedarra. Because no tourists are visiting these islands, the stores are feeling the pinch. We grey nomads fill two caravan parks and we are doing our best, but we don't tend to spend like the backpackers! We're in the council caravan park, which is pretty ordinary, but only $20 per night- the one over the road is more than twice that. And although ours is ordinary in terms of amenities, it's the most picturesque setting we've had yet.
The beach stretches for miles in either direction, almost dead flat with clean sand and blue water, and like all the beaches up here, the tide goes out for miles. There was a brisk wind blowing yesterday, which meant fun for the board riders, which use the wind more than the water- and there was even a little bit of surf.
Today we've been for a drive to Tully Gorge, luckily arriving when a group of tourists were going white water rafting. It was quite interesting to see them being trained prior to setting out, and watching them bounce through the first of the rapids.
The road to the gorge runs through kilometres of banana plantations, the first we've seen on this trip. After a while it runs beside the beautiful Tully River, which has crocodile warning signs all around, though I doubt if they go as far as the white water rafting area.
We next visited Tully Heads and Hull Heads, which are only 2 kilometres apart, though they are related to two different river systems. If you're thinking, as I did, of Sydney Heads, cliffs, headlands etc, forget it- here the term "heads" simply means the river estuary. Tully Heads was quite disappointing, with brown water (but many islands in view). We were surprised about the colour because the river's not muddy, far from it. In the end we decided the colour comes from the sandy bottom, which is a browny yellow shade- it's actually reasonably clean.
Hull Heads was more attractive and there's a cheap campsite there, $13 per night. We're told that the fishing's great but again there are crocodile signs.
Our next stop was Murray Falls and we all had to thank Chris for this- we were a bit tired and I think John and Marg, and certainly myself, would really have preferred to return to the vans, but we were glad we didn't. Murray Falls is stupendous- not tall like Wallaman Falls, but a huge volume of water coming down- imagine what it must be like in the wet season!
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