Uncle Henry & Auntie Edna

Left Townsville today (after a great break with our friends) to visit Melissa's uncle and aunt in Tully.  This part of Australia is a sugar growing area, so lots of cane.  The cutting season is now almost over but still a few mills working.  Unfortunately none are open to the public - they only open during the main harvest of June to November.  We drove through Halifax to Lucinda to see the world's longest jetty.  The sugar is brought to a huge plant at Lucinda and then carted along a 7km jetty out to the waiting cargo ships.  The jetty stretches out to see almost as far as you can see, quite incredible really.  We drove on to Cardwell for lunch, another little coastal town, which is just up the road from the newly developed Port Hinchinbrook.   This is a marina development which is the jumping off point to go out to Hinchinbrook Island.  It looks very nice (and no doubt very expensive).
As we neared Tully, it started to rain - Tully is the wettest place in Australia with a current average rainfall of 4 METRES a year!!  The Big Gumboot in Tully is 7.9m tall, built to this height as it marks the highest rainfall the town has had - incredible to think about when many areas of Australia are in drought and are lucky to get a few millimetres of rain a year.
Uncle Henry and Auntie Edna live between Tully and Mission Beach and have a place with beautiful tropical fruit trees, along with a boat, courtesy of which we dined on prawns and coral trout!  We also enjoyed fresh lychees, dragon fruit and a black sapote pudding - the black sapote is a fruit that tastes just like chocolate.  
On our second day, our uncle and aunt took us for a drive around the area.  We went down to Mission Beach which is famous for bringing "the rainforest to the sea".  The hills go right down to the beach so the rainforest has been left in place.  This means that you can readily see things such as cassowaries right at the beach or on the road because their habitat is intact.  This whole area was heavily hit by Cyclone Larry early this year and the damage is still obvious, all of the trees have had their tops snapped off.  It is quite strange to see, actually.  Most buildings have now been repaired, but you can still see the destruction in the environment.