Epic Round The World Trip Adventures! Stunning Photos & Articles - A fascinating gap year travel journal covering every stop of their journey.

Mission Beach - East Australia
Gap Year Travel Journal

(13th - 14th April) Travelling South After Cairns
We came back down out of the mountains and rejoined the Bruce Highway at Innisfail. By the way, the increase in temperature was huge coming back down to the flat again – at least 10 degrees warmer. On our drive down we stopped off at Mission Beach where Mike had done his tandem parachute jump 10 years ago. He was bitterly disappointed though because the weather was against us and the sea definitely wasn't turquoise this time due to all the dirty rain running off the land. You can see from the photo where Mike is stood on a jetty that the sea is very grey! The photo with the palm trees to the right of the beach shows the potential of the place – it would be beautiful in the sun. Mike also took the picture of the vinegar station at this beach – for preliminary treatment of stinger wounds! We had hoped to go to Dunk Island from here but we had lunch in Priscilla overlooking the windswept bay and watched the ferry rocking and rolling across the sea and decided to give it a miss! Further south we arrived at Rollingstone 50km north of Townsville and found a great campsite with real beachfront pitches. You can just about see how close the sea is behind Priscilla in the photo. The photo with palm trees to the left of the beach is the view from just behind Priscilla looking up the coast. Fantastic place to have our sundowners that night! The following day we arrived in Townsville (photo of the town with the big rock behind it).Here we saw red tailed black cockatoos perched on street lamps and the trees along the esplanade. The photo looking out to sea through palm trees shows the view from the esplanade towards Magnetic Island, another boat trip we abandoned due to bad weather. Magnetic Island has Kaolas living in the wild there, which was our main motivation to go over. We spent the afternoon in the Great Barrier Reef Aquarium which showcases all the marine creatures from this area. The photo shows a puffer fish who entertained us by allowing a cleaner wrasse to swim in and out of his gills and mouth – weird! We then went to the Imax cinema to watch a wide screen film called Deep Sea about the underwater world around the States. Incredible photography and impressive on a huge domed screen above and all around you, the seats were positioned horizontaly to watch the show. Almost felt as if we were diving!