So two weekends ago I was invited to go to Ingham. It was Friday afternoon and we were outside waiting for all of the kids to be picked up when I was asked if I wanted to join a family as they went about a two hour drives north of Ayr. I raced home, threw what I thought I’d need for the weekend in my bag and then hoped in the car and left for the weekend; literally I think there was maybe 45 minutes between the decision and us leaving. As we left, they laughed at me because this was the first time since I arrived in the country that I had left the tiny town of Ayr.
The next morning, we went on a drive (kind of a long way) to Mission Beach. While it a really long drive, it was so beautiful. It went from cane fields, to mountain covered with the deciduous almost tropical rain forests and then gorgeous coastline. On the way we entered cassowary country, there are these HUGE signs about being careful and to make sure that you don’t hit them. Right as we were about to enter the main town area they pointed over to the side and there was one of these huge emu type birds. They asked if I wanted to take a picture, I said that I was alright, so we kept on going, little did I know that I am now like the only person in Australia who has seen one of theses in the wild…WOOPS!
Anyways, we then made it to Mission Beach where I had my first shrimp…and it was sick; they didn’t de-vain them so they were crunch and sandy.
We went down to the beach; it was absolutely beautiful and completely vacant.
The boys of the family that I went with. The one in red is in my class
It’s really too bad that they have jellyfish, stingrays, sharks and crocodiles that they constantly have to worry about. I mean there was a family on the beach that was playing in this little ankle lake on the beach rather than in the beautiful surf right there!
The next day we went out to Wallaman Falls, the longest free-falling waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere.
The only problem thus far with the vegetation aspect of the traveling around is that we are at the end of the dry season, so everything is rather dusty and the waterfalls are not huge (but at least it was going). It was while we eating lunch I was introduced to March flies. These are stupid, huge (like the size of a half dollar) flies that bite and when they bite, it feels like someone is sliding a needle sideways into your skin. They are slow and easily whackable but it was so weird whacking something that huge. Anyways, I was good, moving my legs constantly and stuff like that but as we were getting in the car... bam, I got bit! and it hurt and it left a mark (which it’s not supposed to happen but leave it to me).
Well, before the bite, we went walking down to a river in look of some place to swim. We found this place that was good,
but because there was not tons of movement in the whole river, it was a bit slimy on the bottom. We went on a really nice ‘bush walk’ through the jungle and we even saw a Rock Wallaby (since I didn’t get a picture it looks like a super small kangaroo) it was super cool. Anyways after that, we went back and wrapped up the weekend. It was super exciting and I really enjoyed getting out for the weekend!
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