23rd April 2017 - Mission Beach - Steve has arrived - heading towards Cairns

Sunday 23^rd April 2017

There are now five of us living in Maddie and Peter’s beautiful Mission Beach house.

Six including Mr Baggins!!

This is how he looked after an 8-kilometre walk with me…

We walked along the small beach below Pete and Maddie’s house and then onto the huge wide Mission Beach proper.

There were skydivers, making a comfortable easy landing further up the beach.  Other than that, the whole beach was ours.

Poor Baggins; I didn’t let him off the lead…He seemed to enjoy my company and the walk but…he is very devoted to Pete and Maddie and I strongly suspect he would have legged it off back home if I hadn’t had him tightly attached to me by his lead.

We didn’t see a cassowary, but I had to take a photo of the crossing sign, so delightful.

And when I went through my photos from exactly four years ago I found a nifty bit of videofilm which Pete took of a real live wild cassowary crossing the road very daintily and then disappearing into the thick jungle.

Maddie says she has seen the odd one in their glorious garden.

Why should a cassowary resist??

But at the moment the jungle in the steep mountains is full of berries and delicious things which a wild cassowary would like very much so there is no need to raid the cultivated gardens further down the hill.

I am amazed by the rain.  It has hardly stopped.  Pete Salmon says they get three metres a year…

The issue with creating a garden in the rainforest is not so much one of of planting and encouraging growth…It is more a constant battle with too much abundance.  The paths get overgrown just about overnight.

There is a beautiful new swimming pool but none of us has been for a swim – it is just too wet!

Beautiful but too dark and rainy for a swim!

So our latest arrival is Steve Mason, from Flinders Island.

Steve and Pete

He and Pete have been happily planning an itinerary.

It would just possibly be better if it didn’t bucket down torrentially every half hour but we are all set to leave this afternoon around 3pm, for a fifteen mile trip up the coast towards Cairns.  The next day we should be in Blue Water marina.  All things being equal!

Pete S and Pete H

Soon I will be looking like this again…layered with zinc cream and with totally uncontrolled/uncontrollable hair… I have been enjoying being out of the sun and the wind and having an accessible hairdryer!!