We are going there!
By David
So one day Tracey asks “do you think we could spend a night
camping”. When we started out on our lap
of Australia we had always planned to do the odd night camping away from Cool
George, so of course I answered yes. But
then she added, what if we camped on a tropical island could we possibly manage
that? Ahhhh sure, well I think so,
maybe, most likely. And that is how our
first camping adventure ended up on a tropical island.
By Tracey
I was more than a bit nervous. We aren’t really campers, we have done a bit
with family but not much by ourselves.
In fact until this trip we weren’t caravanners and we are definitely
still learning how to do that. Could we pull this off? But the other side of me said – start with
one night if its super bad just sleep the next few days. How much could really
go wrong anyway?.
We packed up all our gear (hoping we didn’t miss anything
crucial because there was no going back), thought through in our heads how this
would work, what could go wrong, what would we need then. We had three things that made it easier, it
was one night, the island had a working toilet and water and it was the home of
the repeater for Mission Beach so had great mobile reception if things went
pear shaped. Then we watched the
forecast and hoped the miserable wind and rain would just take a break.
By David
How lucky were we.
The day arrived and the rain disappeared. We arrived at the water taxi
at 11am and loaded our gear on to a sort of trailer, we then had to wade out to
the boat (my mid thigh, Tracey’s well bum and the boys up to their waists) and
load our gear on to the water taxi.
Getting off the water taxi was interesting, Dunk has a jetty and our
boat pretty much rammed itself gently up the stairs with the driver gunning the
engines to stay there. The day trippers
got off and then us – me handing the stuff to Tracey on the stairs, her
hoisting it up on the jetty (no help other than the boys who tried so hard to
be helpful).
We lugged our stuff to our campsite. It was a treat – beautiful view, path right
to the beach. We couldn’t believe this
was all ours for the princely sum of $23.95 per night (+ the taxi of
course). Setting up camp wasn’t too
hard – it had been a while since we set this tent up but the brain cells still
worked and in not too long a time we had our set up for the next 28 hours.
Our view!
Us set for the night.
By Tracey
We had brought an esky which we filled with ice just before
leaving and basically picnicked through all our meals. Our table was a bit too sunny so we used nice
shady one next door. For dinner we chose
another spot with a better view of the sunset, for breakfast a different
vantage again. As it turned out no-one
else had booked a site. Our own tropical
island for $24 hard to believe.
By Mr L
Dunk Island makes me feel happy because there were so many
butterflies and we found some wings on the ground. It was the best day we ever
had, because we did camping on the beach. At night we saw toads and frogs, they
were easy to see because they were gold, green and brown. They made me feel a
bit grossed out because they were all over the place.
You should go to Dunk Island because it is so beautiful, you
can snorkel and see coral and fish, build rock towers and swim in warm water.
The ground was a bit hard to sleep on I would prefer to try our
stretcher beds next time.
Mum and Dad let us have a midnight (around 8pm) feast
consisting of biscuits and special treat fruit chew lollies and we played UNO
by torch light.
By Mr C
Dunk Island is AWEMAZING!
I would recommend it totally. I liked the beautiful butterflies that
were everywhere on the island. We were
the only ones camping there it was like we had the whole island to
ourselves. The beaches were excellent
and there were no crocs near here. We
swam in 3 different beaches and they were all beautiful, we even found some
kids at one beach. I really liked
camping there. We got a great site with a little sand walkway right from our tent
to the beach. I also loved the trips on the water taxi they were amazing. On the way back there were lots of waves
making the water fly against my window and wash into the back of the boat. The ride to the mainland was better than a
theme park ride!
The Beaches
By the time we had set up and had a leisurely lunch it was
time to head to a beach – but which one.
We decided on Muggy Muggy which was down the beach in front of us and
through a short rainforest walk. As we
headed to this beach all the day trippers passed us heading back to the
jetty. By the time we arrived we had a
deserted tropical island beach all to ourselves. The water was warm, but unfortunately the
last few days of wind and rain meant that it was murky making our snorkelling
there a bit difficult. Still over the
next two days we all had a good practice and we got to see some coral and
tropical fish.
Muggy Muggy Beach
Brammo Bay Beach
A Ghost Town?
Most of you probably all know that Dunk Island was once the
setting for a major resort (in fact I stayed there with a friend many years ago).
Unfortunately Dunk and Bedarra Islands were also the epicentre for the
landing of Cyclone Yasi in 2011. From
the beach the ~500 people resort appears abandoned and deserted. The once premium beachfront accommodation is
wrecked and vegetation is beginning to claim it bit by bit.
We were perplexed by this, and only Mr C and Mr L were able
to solve the mystery. As I have said
before kids love kids and ours are not unique in this. As we swam on the beach in front of our
campsite two kids and their mum started walking along the beach. In a minute one of the kids had their clothes
off and was in the water with ours. Mums
of course then chat as we watch kids swim.
It turns out there is a small staff at the resort which was sold after
the cyclone. The owners use the resort
for private functions and are planning to turn it into a 6 star resort in the
future. For the present some accommodation
off the beach has been restored and the landscaping is being reinstated. There is also a café near the jetty which is
open Fri to Sun. However, all this
information didn’t stop the place having an eerie feeling especially later in
the evening when the resort was mostly dark.
View from our campsite to the resort
Night time on the island
Dinner was a relaxed picnic with us still in our swimmers,
but with magnificent views and a superb sunset.
We got to shop around for our dinner table so of course chose the best
one. After dinner we decided to do a
night walk on the beach and went down to the jetty. To our surprise there were people fishing and
apparently they had heard us laughing our way through our dinner (the boys were doing silly voices). They said it made them really smile.
We went back to the tent for our tropical night feast
instead of dessert. I won’t say it was a
restful night of great sleep. But it was
a beautiful, warm tropical night. The
breezes were soft, the stars were out and there wasn’t a drop of rain. Really can it get any better than this.
Sunset Café
The next morning we were up with the sun and the birds,
albeit a bit stiff and sore (well David and I were the boys seemed fine). Again we had the choice of the island for our
breakfast table so went in search of some sun to warm us all up. We found a lovely table next to the Sunset
Café near the jetty and to make my life totally blissful the chef turned up
(turned out he was the father of yesterday’s kids) and offered me a cup of
tea. I had been wrong, life had just got
even better.
We went for a nice long morning walk on deserted beach after
deserted beach. We tried to get the boys
to do the mountain walk but all they wanted was to go back to Muggy Muggy beach
and do more snorkelling and rock tower building. Who were we to argue? The morning taxi arrived at 9 so after that
we actually had to share the beach with other people (the cheek of it).
We lunched back at our campsite – this time at our own
table. Packed our things up and went
swimming again. We all indulged in an
icecream from the café and then it was time to go back to Mission Beach. The taxi was totally full (fortunately a
passenger or two helped us on this time) and the ride was bumpy. The boys loved it!
All of us loved the feeling of being on a tropical island
and would love to do it again sometime.
And in answer to the earlier question, yes we can handle
camping away from the caravan and actually can’t wait to do it again.
