Hi, we arrived in Townsville late this afternoon. Well, 16kms north of Townsville anyway. We didn't leave Cairns until 11:30 after a slow morning pack up, and an even slower sitting in the car until the women came out of the craft shop!
We drove south with only a couple of detours. the first was to Mission Beach. K wanted to see where his parents used to take their van on holidays.
The second was to drive through Tully to see the remaining damage after cyclone Yasi. There were still a lot of houses and buildings with tarps on them, and a lot of buildings that have been left for ruin. Most of the damage was to old buildings of corrugated iron or weatherboard.
The surrounding forests, even at Mission Beach, had obviously been stripped of most of their foliage as the trees were like dead trunks with blobs of new branches and leaves. It was different to what they would be like if a fire had gone through, as they still had their normal trunk colourings. It was very odd to see. A lot of the palm trees which lined the 3km or so Mission Beach were also still lying on their sides.
Apart from those little detours, it was an uneventful trip down here. I took a couple of photos at Mission Beach but haven't downloaded them as yet. I may download them tomorrow with the things we see tomorrow, then post them.
Hope you all are having a good time at home. We are up here... :)