Having left the Big Marlin, we motored down the road to a coastal resort Mission Beach . We had been told that the name referred to a Mission that had been set up here in the early settler days but some of the tourist information dispels this by stating clearly that there never was a mission (but doesn’t explain why the town got its name). Anyway, the ‘town’ is really three separate places, Mission, South Mission and the curiously named Wongaling, which always gets one of us singing ‘underground, overground, wongaling free…’

The main area is Mission and we stayed in a caravan site very close to this cluster of cafes, bars and shops. We had intended staying in the council run site on the beach side of the road but this was full when we arrived so we had to stay in the private site opposite (swankier facilities but a higher cost). Both sites are only a few steps from the pulsing heart of Mission and we enjoyed visiting Coconutz bar, where the XXX Gold was flowing freely and they have a fine approach to internet access: they just pass you a laptop over the bar and ask you to settle up when you’ve finished . Lots of the bars have music and it’s clear that this is quite a lively place at times although our experience of it suggests that it is a long way from 24 hour raves.

There’s quite a strong art and craft feel to the place and we were strangely reminded of our home area of Chapel Allerton; the same mixture of bars, cafes and a bit of community life (but Chapel A weather is a little crisper than it is here). However, we were surprised to get the first real, if intermittent, rain since we came to Australia, an extra inconvenience as we were trying to dry out our dive gear! We therefore spent a bit of time laying stuff out in the sun then rushing to shove it all back in the van.

Some of the artistic flavour of the place can be seen in the range of beachside sculptures and decorations which show strong local involvement (though it is not all inspiring!) There’s also a local Sunday market with lots of locally made clothes, hats, glass ornaments (including glass jellyfish wind chimes), mobiles from shells and driftwood (interesting because nobody is supposed to take these from the shore), stingray kites as well as the usual fruit and veg .

We took a walk along a newly established walkway just in from the coast leading northwards along Mission Beach, over Clump Point (which is formed from huge chunks of volcanic basalt rock) to Narragon Beach. There is an interesting plaque telling the aboriginal dreamtime story about the way the rocks were formed and the animal characters involved but is almost incomprehensible without some deeper understanding of the whole culture. Our photo of the plaque gives you all the information we have.

It is surprising how just a thin section of rainforest screens you from any awareness of the coast road. We saw lots of lizards of various sizes as we walked through the woodland. Where the ocean was going out we were able to spot lots of mudfish in the mangrove. We had seen these small fish before; they don’t seem to be inconvenienced when they are beached up right out of the water and use their fins as legs, scuttling around to find a cosy place to settle . Presumably their gills work slightly differently to normal fish and they don’t just die out of water (no doubt one of our readers can fill in the missing zoological details!) As usual the areas are filled with insects, butterflies and birds that we cannot name. We looked out again for the promised cassowaries but needless to say did not find any. We have been told that the numbers are as low as 1500 and the rainforest area they inhabit covers many thousands of acres so it’s not really surprising that they are so elusive.

We found a curious monument close to the centre of Mission commemorating Sidney Harris. He was an early settler who was killed single-handedly fighting a bushfire (probably a fire that he had started himself to control land that had got out of control). His friends called on the services of an un-named aboriginal man, who successfully found the body. At this stage the friends buried the body and built a large cairn over it using large local volcanic rocks . They also placed a cast metal plaque marking the grave of the said Sidney Harris. Each friend donated a post and another donated some chain to fence the cairn off. Later this site became part of the caravan site we were staying on and the cairn was broken down; the plaque being moved to a location ‘behind the community hall’. Later still, the local council decided that the plaque was not being seen enough there, so it moved it again to its current position on the beach side of the road with a few token rocks and placed a new set of poles and chain. Despite his peripatetic memorial, Sidney himself presumably still remains somewhere under our campsite!

We’ve managed close encounters with a few Aussie creepy-crawlies here. A menacing looking (if not very big) spider appeared on my chair and when I tried to brush it off it made a sensational jump onto the table. Here his crab like front claws were even more apparent, as was his ability to hold on very tight. Later in the evening we were joined in the van by a huge green cricket like creature, magnificently camouflaged as a leaf but standing out a bit against our beige Formica interior. We were finally able to usher it out but then almost immediately found it (or its friend) inside again, a very persistent blighter.