Well, we made it all the way up that very long coast to Cairns. Thanks David, for your paper towel map! Thanks Bill, for your companionship along the way!
Our last day on the sunburned road was truly unforgettable.
The day’s plan called for a stop in Mission Beach South for lunch. None of us had ever heard of Mission Beach South, and it didn’t appear on David’s paper towel, but our extremely friendly waitress in a restaurant back in Townsville was from there, and she said it was right on our way, and that we should stop at a particular restaurant there at which she’d used to work, and tell them that she’d sent us, and that they’d take care of us.
Day broke wet, windy and miserable; and a careful analysis of the map revealed that Mission Beach South was twenty-something kilometers off the Bruce Highway; but we had to eat somewhere, so I plugged the Beachcomber Cafe into the GPS and we began hurtling northward.
Within an hour we came across a Big Crab!
Big Crab in the gathering storm
Big Crab close up
After we turned off the highway and headed towards the coastline… for maybe a few more kilometers than Captain Daddy had envisioned (there’s a teeny tiny chance that I may have failed to mention that distance-of-detour information I’d gleaned from my map)… we started to see a lot of those diamond kangaroo-crossing signs.
Well, ho hum. We’d seen these all over Australia, and hadn’t glimpsed a single blessed wild kangaroo in, I dunno, 7,453,234 kilometers or whatever it was we’d covered so far. Nothing but a Big Tease, those signs are.
But then we started to see these ones:
… which triggered a lively van side debate that carried us for a good ten minutes, running something along these lines:
“Now what’s that sign for? It looks like a wild turkey–”
“– it can’t be a turkey; turkeys are only wild in the US–”
“– I think it’s a cassowary–”
“– it can’t be a cassowary; cassowaries are extinct –”
“– cassowaries aren’t extinct; you’re thinking of moas –”
“– I am certainly not thinking of moas; I’ve never heard of moas; I’m thinking of cassowaries, which are extinct.”
“–If they were extinct, why would there be a sign saying beware of them crossing?”
“You have to concede, she does have a point, there.”
“Well that’s why I’m saying, it must be a wild turkey! Maybe turkeys were introduced to Australia along with foxes and rabbits and camels.”
“Why would anybody bother to introduce turkeys when they already have cassowaries? It’s much easier to hunt a bird that can’t fly.”
“You could even make an argument that it’s hardly sportsmanlike.”
“They couldn’t hunt the cassowaries because the cassowaries were extinct!”
Then we came across a great big official sign reading: Cassowary Conservation Area. That pretty effectively put a damper on that particular debate.
By the time we pulled into the Beachcomber Cafe parking lot, a cyclone had kicked up:
First time since we’d arrived in Australia that the sun didn’t shine…
… and the Beachcomber Cafe turned out to be a cute but rather modest fish-and-chips shack, which ordinarily would have been perfect, but given the weather, and its lack of inside seating, seemed pretty sub-optimal.
We were on the verge of investigating prospects elsewhere, except that evidently Erin had actually called and told them that six Americans in a minivan would be stopping by for lunch and to please take good care of them.
What a country, hey?
They pulled a table and chairs around the corner and into a large protected overhang that certainly appeared to belong to an entirely different establishment, and we all enjoyed a lovely fried lunch whilst watching the wind whip through the palm trees.
After lunch, Stella and Sheila walked across the street to use the public bathrooms, and while the rest of us were waiting for them in the van…
Holy Moly!
Our first kangaroo in the wild… ish
OK, not quite in the wild, in the sense of wilderness — it was adjacent to the public bathrooms — but still. Born Free.
As we drove onward, we saw another one, hopping into the Cassowary Conservation Area, but I couldn’t get the camera out in time.
I sighed in contentment, so very, very happy that we’d actually seen real live wild kangaroos on our final day of the Sunburned Roadtrip.
“If only we could only see a cassowary as well,” I mused aloud, “this day would be perfect. How cool would that be, to see a cassowary in the wild? I bet if we hiked down that trail for just a kilometer or two…”
Tom hit the brakes. I was astonished, because he absolutely positively never ever EVER consents to stopping the minivan for a spontaneous HIKE.
“There you go,” he announced just a smidge triumphantly.
OMG!
Cassowary in the wild… ish
There it was, right along the side of the road.
Cassowaries are not, obviously, extinct; but they are critically endangered; Mission Beach is one of only a handful of places in the world where they live in the wild; and the estimated population there is only forty adults. How.cool.is.that.
What could conceivably top that off?
Well. There’s only one possibility:
The capstone of a Perfect Day
Family Gap Year 
Hilarious!!
And, I’m glad that Tom didn’t hit the cassowary and bring the wild population to 39.
ACKKK! Perish the thought! Can you imagine how awful we’d feel if we’d hit a critically endangered animal? Stella cries when we hit a squirrel!