Travelling through inland Australia: Days15 and 16 Charters Towers to Wongaling Beach and Wongaling Beach

On Wednesday we made the relatively long drive from Charters Towers to Wongaling Beach. Wongaling Beach is one of the coastal communities that make up the Mission Beach area. Mission Beach itself is located about 4 kms north of us. We travelled 368 kms in 5.5 hours including a lunch break at Crysal Creek Service Station and caravan park.

It is an interesting drive along the Flinders Highway through well-wooded grazing land surrounded by large and spectacularly shaped mountains that got larger and more spectacular the closer to Townsville we got. We negotiated Townsville almost flawlessly, just one minor glitch when Karen, the voice of our GPS (no Karen, she is not named after you) directed down on off ramp she thought was the Bruce Highway. However it did not take us long to get back on the right road. The Bruce Highway is as narrow as ever. However, we discovered that it had been extensively resealed only a week or two before our arrival. We only struck one piece of road work. I shudder to think how slow the trip would have been if we had arrived a week earlier! The traffic wasn't too bad and before long we were bowling along through the sugar cane country through Ingham and Tully. We spotted the sea for the first time at Cardwell. What a welcome sight!

We arrived at our destination, Dunk Island View Caravan Park, at about 2.00 pm. This is a largish, pet friendly park just across the road from the beach. It is made up mostly of good-sized slab sites. The grass sites are in condition with no dust. As is to be expected at this time of the year, it is almost completely full. We had an interesting night last night. One of the people staying on the site next door slept in a one man tent. We quickly discovered why. He snored his head off all night! But that did not stop us getting a good night's sleep.

I got up relatively early this morning and went for a long walk on the beach. How can I describe this beach in a way that does justice to it? I can't. It is an absolutely superb beach. It is a broad, slightly sloping beach of golden, fine grained sand that he been graded to perfection by the incoming and retreating tides. It is an ideal walking beach. It also has almost nobody on it despite the fact that we are at the peak of the tourist season. I think most of the people in the van park must just stay in their vans all day.

Later in the day, after walking up to the local Woollies, we took a drive up to Mission Beach. This is a beaut little spot with quite a few boutiques and gift shops and some very seductive cafes, restaurants and bars. I think if you stayed here you would soon discover that you were eating out far more frequently than you planned!

A quick word about any lingering after-effects of Cyclone Yasi, the category 5 cyclone that totally devastated this area 3 or 4 years ago. Apart from some obvious damage to the foreshore vegetation, there aren't any.

Weather-wise, what can I say. You have to imagine night-time temperatures no lower than 15 degrees, day-time temps in the middle to high 20's and a cool breeze that continually wafts over you as you sit in the shade enjoying your breakfast and lunch. Bet its not like that in Canberra at the moment!

OK, that's more than enough for today, time for some photos.