Photos from the Real AUSTRALIA

The Cassowary Coast: from Innisfail to Townsville

It is 160 km from Innisfail to Townsville along the Bruce Highway and there are beautiful beaches and great views on the way. The Cassowary Coast is the stretch of coastline between Gordonvale and Cardwell, and halfway between Innisfail and Tully is the turnoff to Kurrimine Beach. This is a quiet fishing and holiday village with a major reef flat, King Reef, adjacent to the shore. Not far south of here is the Mission Beach area, a string of holiday resorts from Garners Beach to South Mission Beach. Offshore is Dunk Island, reachable by regular ferries and water taxis. The Kennedy Track leads to the mouth of the Hull River, 4 km south of South Mission Beach. And along the road leading back to the main road to Tully, is the Licuala State Forest with large stands of Licuala ramsayi, the Fan palm, native to Queensland.

The small town of Tully, set among sugar cane fields and banana plantations, is one of the wettest towns of Australia with an annual average rainfall of 4200 mm. It was established in the 1870s and developed when a sugar mill was constructed in the 1920s. The Tully river is nowadays the scene of white water rafting where it leads out of spectacular Tully Gorge. A road leads up to Tully Gorge National park, with great views on the way.

43 km south of Tully is the town of Cardwell, from where regular ferries and tours depart to Hinchinbrook Island, a 35 km long island separated by the Hinchinbrook Channel from the mainland. Continuing south, past the town of Ingham, is Paluma Range National Park centred on the mountain village of Paluma, at an elevation of 900 m. Jourama falls is one of the beauty spots here, with great views and rock pools with huge boulders. Finally, 110 km south of Ingham is Townsville, the commercial and industrial "capital" of Far North Queensland. The Strand is the long esplanade along the Pacific Ocean, with a long, inviting beach; however, as everywhere along the coast, swimming is safest in the "stinger' enclosures offering protection from the box jellyfish.

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