25th April - Mission Beach - Alligator Creek

Thursday 25^th April

And a very splendid Anzac Day it was, for us, here in Mission Beach.

It is so very pretty here, perched, as we are, on a hill overlooking the bay, at Pete and Maddie’s house.  Here is a photo from their front porch:

And here it is again, improved, because Pete and Pete moved 2XS into view.

Last night we had a very delicious roast chicken dinner.  A local friend, Stewart, ex-master mariner, arrived to make Pete and Pete very happy with enormous beer cans.  

Maddie and I were more delicate, with small glasses of red wine.  

And today I achieved one of my life’s ambitions: I saw a cassowary!  Yes!  A darling teenage cassowary, ambling across the road, just beyond a Cassowary – Recent Crossing sign on the highway.  Of course I didn’t get my camera out fast enough… (Earlier I had spoken to Michael on the phone, and said we were going to Alligator Creek, where there were sure to be giant monitors, and cassowaries.  “Yes,” he said, wearily.  “They always tell me, when I go to Tully, with the army, that I will see cassowaries and giant lizards ambling down the street.  But,” he added bitterly, “They lie!”)

We drove through Tully and up into the hills, where there is a beautiful little river, with glorious water holes.  

A wonderful place for a picnic and a splishy splash in the cool clear water, with brilliant Ulysses butterflies fluttering above us.  And no I did not swill beer!  I just had a SIP, and then swam!

I persuaded Pete and Pete to pose for this photo in the creek, wearing their Special Hats. Pete Headlam’s is, of course, his Tilley hat, still with us if slightly battered.  And Pete Salmon’s is a wonderful leather hat which he calls Flotsam, because Maddie found it somewhere on a beach, slightly submerged, covered with barnacles and coral.  She rescued it, scrubbed it, and it is now it is his very favourite hat.

And here is beautiful Maddie in her own straw hat...

On the way home we visited Stewart - yet anther wonderful tropical house-on-a-hill.  I was very taken with his bouquet of flowers, just gathered, carelessly, from his garden...