Mission Beach

Mission Beach was a welcome change from Cairns. Its a far more relaxed place, and the Absolute Backpackers hostel that we checked into was excellent. They actively encouraged travellers to bring in their own booze, and the large communal kitchen and eating area made it easy to make new friends. On our first day in Mission Beach we went white-water rafting on the grade 4 rapids of the Tully River. Here Gaz learnt the hard way that Tara doesn’t react well in a crisis. On one of the first major rapids of the day, David (one of our fellow rafters) lost his grip on the raft and tumbled out of the boat taking Gaz with him. Whilst Gaz attempted to scramble back onto the raft, Tara looked on in panic but didn’t feel the urge to help him into the boat. It was left to the instructor to scramble across the raft and pull Gaz to safety. It was a great day nonetheless though and we’d thoroughly recommend it to anyone. On our second day in Mission beach we decided to throw ourselves out of an aeroplane from 14,000ft with an Australian attached to our backs. Fortunately both of our Australians had remembered to attach parachutes to their own backs so we were in safe hands. Tara took all of this in her stride as she’d done this before, but Gaz was terrified to begin with. For Gaz the 20 minute ascent to 14,000ft is what Alex Ferguson would probably describe as “squeaky-bum time”. The 60 seconds of freefall was nothing short of amazing though, and quite possibly the best single experience of our trip so far. Two-days later the adrenalin is still pumping round our bodies.