North to Cairns, Bowling Green NP, Jourama Falls, Mission Beach and a night in a car park, oh and the town Hollywood forgot

Sian and I set off from Airlie Beach in the camper van Sian had travelled up the East Coast in with her parents. The plan was to take a few days, trying to stop at "cheap" or free sites, before arriving in Cairns, where I would look for work and Sian would head to Bali from.
We spent the first night at an idyllic campsite in Bowling Green National Park, wallabies hopped around the site and finally it stopped raining. On the way to the site we stopped in Bowen, or at least close to it at a really beautiful bay. Baz Luhrmann was meant to make a film in Bowen with Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe, it was going to be the biggest thing that ever happened in Bowen. The town erected a welcome sign to the cast and crew and changed the large Bowen sign to the one below, all rather prematurely. Unfortunately the film was never made and the investment expected never arrived, but the signs remain.


Australia's Hollywood, Bowen!

Rose Bay, near Bowen

Townsville

A giant mango! Australia has a strange obsession with enlarging ordinary things to give ordinary places something to make them less ordinary.

We found another great campsite the following night at Jourama Falls. The falls were a short hike across a stream (I almost lost a flip flop to), the views were really spectacular.

Sian saves my flip-flop! It was touch a go for a while

Jourama Falls

We were the only people at the campsite, the National Park sites are often pretty empty. We did have to drive through a stream to get to the site, had it rained heavy we would have needed to drive out and fast, a ranger had warned us the stream can leave campers stranded for days.
The facilities were basic, the toilets are really glorified holes in the ground, but there was running water and an outdoor shower, that after the hike to the falls was the perfect temperature.

Jourama Falls Campsite

For our final full day in the camper, we arrived at Mission Beach, named after a group of missionaries that lost there lives in a, eh big storm, some time in the eh, past. My research skills are unfortunately deteriorating.
The weather changed again and the sea looked less inviting. You can't actually have free reign to swim off Mission Beach because of the stingers at sea, they do have a giant enclosure for swimmers, but it didn't look inviting.

Mission Beach

Unfortunately for our last night in the camper, we couldn't find a good camp site (by good I mean free) so we ended up in a car park, in the ugly town of Innisfail. We were happy to be only an hour or so drive from Cairns and the next day returned to the camper van. It was a great little trip and we were able to see so much more thanks to having the freedom of a camper, in my opinion the best way to travel.