CASSOWARY COAST WATCH VIDEO The Cassowary Coast region provides a stunning gateway to the Atherton Tablelands with beautiful beaches, offshore islands, rainforest-fringed freshwater streams, majestic mountain ranges and rich seas and agricultural land producing food from fish and shellfish to vegetables, sugar cane, beef and ultra-tropical fruit. Where better than the Cassowary It encompasses the larger towns of Coast to see the endangered Southern COASTAL HIGHLIGHTS Innisfail, Tully, Cardwell and Mission Cassowary – a two metre tall flightless Beach. bird and a key disperser of rainforest ► Jump the Beach at TUL LY is home to the famous 7.9 metre seeds? In a quirk of nature, it is the Mission Beach giant ‘golden gumboot’, sugar mill male cassowary that incubates the tours during the cane crushing season eggs and raises the chicks. ► Dunk Island for the day and white-water rafting. MISSION BE ACH is one of the few places ► Island or reef fishing, CARDW ELL is the stepping off point where the Wet Tropics and Great Barrier snorkel or dive trip for Hinchinbrook Island, the largest Reef World Heritage Areas meet. The ► Fruit Forest Farm tour at island national park in the southern reef is closer to Mission Beach than Mission Beach hemisphere. It is also home to the places further north and local firms Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre, offer reef fishing, snorkeling and ► Charlie’s Chocolate tour at representing artists from nine diving trips, and sightseeing trips Mission Beach traditional owner groups. around the Family Islands, including ► Girringun Aboriginal Art famous Dunk Island. At Mission Beach Centre at Cardwell INNISF AIL, the regional centre, is a pretty you can “jump the beach”, taking in town built on the confluence of the a birds-eye view of the reef with a ► Golden Gum Boot & mill North and South Johnstone rivers. In skydive before landing on the sand. tours at Tully the wake of the 1918 cyclone, the town Perhaps a rainforest or beachside walk Art Deco heritage walk was rebuilt in the Art Deco style. The is more your style, or simply relaxing ► town centre is worth a visit, boasting and enjoying a delicious meal at an in Innisfail Australia’s largest concentration of excellent local eatery. Art Deco buildings, with examples of Spanish, Sicilian, Moroccan, Italian and CASSOWARY CO AST is Australia’s banana- Anglo Saxon Art Deco design facades. growing hub and centre of a growing ultra-tropical fruit industry, with CANECUTTER WAY is a major highlight of mangosteens (the ‘queen of tropical this region and is a 52km scenic drive fruit’), lychees, rambutans, guanabana between Kurrimine Beach and Innisfail. (sour sop) and now cocoa, with a It is billed as the ‘Greatest Detour in chocolate factory at Mission Beach. North Queensland’. 44 www.athertontablelands.com.au