We arrived here on Monday 14th. Mission beach is a beautiful area, rich in plant and wildlife. It is cassowary country. They are strange looking emu like creatures and are endangered..probably because they keep running out into the road! There are only about 1500 left in Australia and are essential to keeping some plant life alive (some plants germinate from their poo!) We spent the afternoon with Robbie’s dad at Uncle Dennis’house and then afterwards at a beautiful cliff side hotel (see picture). Unfortunately we were only there for coffee, not to sleep. We were based at the campsite on the beach. Nice I hear you say? Actually no…later that evening it proceeded to pour down and continued to do so for the next 48 hours. We were completed washed out and the kids had to sleep in the van on the second night. The rain didn’t seem to stop Robbie and the kids however. They still managed to get some swimming in at the campsite pool despite it raining pretty heavily! This area is apparently one of the wettest in Australia. It is still recovering from a huge cyclone in 2006 that pretty much wiped out the neighbouring town Innishal. Uncle Dennis tells us that in the monsoon season the rain comes down so hard that you have to cover your mouth with your hand just to breathe. We left this area on Wednesday having seen pretty much nothing as it was too wet to travel anywhere.