Our short trip from Cardwell to Cairns was more eventful than our time at Cardwell itself where we swam at the pool and caught up with our clothes washing. In the morning we headed to Mission Beach, a place my mum had visited as a child and Uni student. It was a nice little touristy place and we stopped for some morning tea of chai lattes and raw blueberry cheesecake at a cafe behind the beach. As we were enjoying morning tea a group of skydivers appeared over our heads and landed on the beach just in front of us. Lilah was in awe and said she would love to do that. Thankfully for Mum and Dad there is a minimum age for such pursuits.

After Mission Beach we headed to Paronella Park, apparently Queensland’s number one tourist destination even though none of us had ever heard about it. When we arrived we got a “special offer” because we didn’t want to buy the 2 year pass. As we walked around with the guided tour I noticed how much damage and natural disasters the castles had gone through, but impressive that all of the castles foundations had withstood the pressures and time over the years without collapsing. After the guided tour, we walked down ‘Lovers Lane’ to the river to feed the turtles and fish. There were heaps of turtles piling over each other trying to get a taste of what seemed to be some delicious fish food, even the giant eel was enjoying it. On the way back we walked down a path lined with Kauri pines, they where massive and not even that old in tree terms. After more feeding of the fish at the waterfall it was finally time to head through the sugar cane fields and banana plantations to Cairns.