Wonga Beach to Townsville

From Wonga Beach we carried on down south and stopped in a little town called Kuranda for lunch, we've found a lot of little towns like this that have cute centres with bakeries and local stores. We drove past a few more small towns and through the Atherton Tablelands and eventually stopped at Lake Eacham, where we spent the night. We parked up at a camping spot and walked through the rainforest before getting to a national park with Lake Eacham in the middle. It was really pretty here and we put on our swimmies and joined the locals for a swim. The water was cold and deep and we had a great swim here. That evening we had much better luck with the weather and cooking and camping seemed like the easiest thing again and it was nice to sit outside and have dinner.
The next day we continued on our road trip, but took a slight detour to see a Waterfall circuit. We stopped at 3 or 4 big waterfalls that were so beautiful and it was very tempting to dive in and cool down.
So far we hadn't seen too much destruction from cyclone Yasi, until we got to Mission Beach. The beach was a mess and driving through town you could see people working hard to get their homes and businesses back up and running. We stopped at a place called Scotty's which had been recommended and the lady there was very friendly, but we felt so sorry for her. She walked through the place telling us how things were before the cyclone hit and she recalled the day it happened and told us how they came out of the shelter during the eye of the storm and how devastating it already was, bearing in mind the second half was still to come. She said the second half was worst and that when she came back to her place and saw everything lying around and lots destroyed, she burst into tears. They had managed to clean a lot of it by the time we got there, but there were mattresses out in the sun, hoping to dry and fridges that were still lying on their sides.
We spent the night here and they were so happy to see people in the place again.
After Mission beach we drove through Tully, which was more affected and you could see houses without roofs and lots of work on the roads going on, and arrived in Townsville. There wasn't too much here, but we found an internet cafe and a nice camping site with a pool just outside of town, where we spent one night.
It is incredibly hot and humid and even the shade doesn't give much relief, but it's great to be here!

Atherton Tablelands