Mon, 3rd to Tues, 4th October - Mission Beach

On Monday morning Rick had a message from his Mum to say that his Uncle Bill had passed away at 2:30am.  Uncle Bill had been in hospital for a while and his passing was still a shock even though it had been expected at any time.  We decided that Rick should attend the private family get-together in Sydney to celebrate his life, once a date and time had been set.

We had already decided to head 50kms south to Mission Beach again, so we packed up and got away at about 9am.  Our friends (Steve and Linda from Townsville) who we met in WA earlier on our trip were also going to Mission Beach for a week. We booked into the Mission Beach Council Caravan Park across the road from where we had stayed previously.  This park was half the price (only $20/night) and was actually right on the water.  After setting up, we once again caught up with the shopping and later in the afternoon Steve called in to say hello and have a beer.

On Tuesday we heard that the family get-together for Uncle Bill would be at 11.30am on Friday morning.  Rick then spent approx 2 hours on line trying to find suitable flights for himself to Sydney - either from Cairns or Townsville.  All Cairns flights were fully booked (last week of the NSW school holidays), but he eventually managed to get flights out of Townsville, due to leave at 6am on Thursday morning and return late on Friday night.  This meant we had to leave the following morning to head for Townsville ... approx. 150kms.

We caught up with Linda in the main street later in the day, before heading back to the van for a bit of a relax and a swim.

Our campsite at Mission Beach