After our adventure yesterday, January 4th was a quiet day. In the morning we packed our bags again and headed towards Townsville. Not for any particular reason, other than breaking our trip to Cairns. We expected a small beach town, but were quite surprised by Townsville’s size. Our hotel was close to the beach and while mr. Scientist did the groceries (and made some great freekeh curry and salad) I checked out the beach. 

The next day we drove the last part to Cairns, but made a little detour to go on a Cassowary hunt! Cassowaries are big birds (2 meter) that look like live remnants from the dinosaur age. Apparently it is very rare to spot them in the wild, but according to the Rough Guide you have the best chances at the Cassowary trail over at Mission beach. So, that is where we went!

And I must say, for an animal that is only rarely seen, they do make a big fuss about them along the road:

It is actually quite amazing how many Cassowary signs they have. I mean, I have seen tons of dead kangaroos along the road (and 0 cassowary) but there is only the one sign for them… Oh, and we also saw this tree dressed in a bikini:

And dearies, rest assured: we did get to see a father with two chicks! I am quite sure that it is the father, because the Cassowaries do stay-at-home-dads. Pretty cool to have actually seen them!

After that we wanted to do some hiking, but this region has seen some heat waves and floodings in the last couple of weeks, so unfortunately our planned track was closed because of weather damage. We found a nice picknick spot however and a shorter trail right next to it that we decided to do. A good thing it turned out, because the mosquitos were killing me! Of course I had put on repellent, but these buggers must have adapted to the smell, because even though I almost passed out because of the fumes, they happily continued playing three-in-a-row on me:

I mean look at that! One wasn’t even paying attention… But the hike was nice and this way even if we do not to get to the Daintree rainforest because of the weather, at least we will have seen a little bit of rainforest.