June 20th, 2019
When we got up this morning, I thought our diving adventure began tomorrow in Cairns.
This meant we had a pretty full day of driving to get to Cairns by tonight. We decided to drive about four hours to Mission Beach and thought we would check out the beach and have lunch. This was the first time on our trip I felt a little homesick. Up until now I have missed my family, Sadie the dog, and my friends in a normal way. Today was a little different though because it was my brother’s birthday and I felt that I could be missing some family time. I found out later that my brother went camping for his birthday and there were no special family gatherings I missed on this occasion.
We are on our 3rd audio book of this East Coast drive and that has helped pass the time in the car. We got to Mission beach and after 5 nights of camping in the car, it was a wreck. Brendan made some noodles and rice for lunch on the little camp stove and we took some time to reorganize the car.
We walked on the beach and there were little sand balls made by small crabs. I thought they were very interesting and from a distance they looked like the outline of fallen leaves.
We found a spot and were lying on the sand when I looked at my phone and realized our diving trip didn’t start tomorrow, but the day AFTER tomorrow. I suppose when you are not working and don’t have any responsibilities, it is easy to get the days mixed up. We have a whole extra day to get to Cairns than we thought. With this information we decided to leave the beach and drive another hour to go to ‘Waterfall Circuit’ at Atherton Tablelands. Apparently one of the falls, Millaa Millaa is the most photographed waterfall in Australia and where Herbal Essence filmed one of their shampoo commercials. The drive out there was really pretty. Rolling hills and farmlands with the bright green, almost-neon grass.
We saw three falls on the circuit and hiked to the bottom of two of them. Then we drove another 1-2 hours and made it to the next free camp spot. Tomorrow we will go to Cairns and spend the day.