Our camp kitchen has just been repainted in preparation for Mission Beach local artist Sal Badcock to commence painting a mural on the walls. This will take a number of weeks to complete and promises to be entertaining for our park guests. Sal is due to start on or about the 2nd of July.

Time for us to say goodbye!
Graham and I have been managing Dunk Island View Caravan Park for a year and in that time we have developed some great friendships, so it was a very hard decision to make to leave. We left on Wednesday 11th April and arrived home safe and sound.
Our main reason for returning to Brisbane was because of family. My Dad has recently gone into a nursing home in Brisbane and he has missed us terribly. Just seeing the look on his face and the accompanying tears was enough for us to know that we’d made the right choice. Our children and grandchildren are absolutely ecstatic to have us home again. We’re a very close family so to be back amongst them again is fantastic.
I’d like to thank our good friends Anne and John Herbert who own the park, for giving us such a great opportunity to learn new skills and had the confidence in us to manage the park successfully. We’ve had a long and enduring friendship and that will continue in the years to come.
Our working life was spent with some amazing people such as Julie, Lisa, Michelle, Chloe, Hazel, John Pender, and in the last week the two new managers Sue van Wessem and Shaun Lambert. I cannot thank these friends enough for all their help and support over the past year. They are special people and we will miss them terribly. Sue and Shaun are lovely people and I’m sure that they will make your visit very memorable.
We were so happy to see in our last week there, a Cassowary with 3 chicks. They’re very elusive so to see one just before we left was priceless. We will miss FNQ and the people we’ve met and we’re so glad we accepted the offer to work there.
Graham and Sue Denny

 John and Anne, the owners of Dunk Island View Caravan Park, would like to say farewell to Sue and Graham Denny, who have worked tirelessly over the last 12 moths managing our park.  They will be missed by all and we wish them all the best with their future adventures.

Taking over from Sue and Graham, we would like to welcome Sue Van Wessem and Shaun Lambert who have recently moved to Mission Beach from Victoria. To all our guests and patrons please feel free to drop by and say hello, Sue and Shaun would love to meet you and help you in any way possible.

Warmest regards,

John and Anne Herbert

Easter is only a few days away so here are our trading hours during this period.

Thursday 29th March     8am - 5pm
Friday 30th March     8am - 7pm
Saturday 31st March     8am - 7pm
Sunday 1st April     8am - 7pm**
Monday 2nd April     8am - 2pm

**Sunday night between 5.30pm and 7pm we will be serving delicious roast pork with vegetables, gravy and apple sauce.
Please call 4068 8248  to make a booking to eat in or takeaway.

In evolutionary terms, the flightless birds, or ratites, were some of the earliest types of birds to develop. Some still exist today including the emu, rheas, kiwis and the ostrich.  But several have become extinct in recent times including the Moas of New Zealand and the Elephant Bird of Madagascar.  Some of these primitive birds are recognised as such because they have feathers which are not structured for aerodynamic flight. One of the most striking features about the cassowary is its long and unusual black feathers.  Cassowary feathers differ from other birds in that they have a quill that splits in two.

Cassowaries are Gondwanan in origin and were concentrated in the small part of the super continent that later broke apart and became the present areas of Northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and some of the eastern island groups of Indonesia. 

Two separate populations of Australian cassowary exist - one in the Wet Tropics area from Mt Halifax/Paluma through to Cooktown and the other on Cape York Peninsula in the McIlwraith and Iron Ranges, Jardine River area and the Eastern Dunes. The Australian cassowary is called the Southern Cassowary or sometimes the Double-wattled Cassowary. Once you realise that this species is also found in Papua New Guinea along with two more species and several subspecies, then it becomes clear why ours is called the Southern Cassowary. 

A Cassowary is a solitary animal and when it is a sub-adult, it is banished from the home range of its father. The young animal wanders off to find its own future patch of habitat. It finds a part of the forest where it can coexist with  the resident adult cassowaries and starts learning its way around.

This is a vulnerable time for the maturing Cassowary.  

Dogs can easily chase it down and kill it; an adult Cassowary already  resident in  that forest can attack it and perhaps the young Cassowary may not be able to find sufficient food in a foreign area where it is disoriented.
Once the Cassowary has established its home range, it moves regularly through that range which can be quite large. Some of the Daintree animals have a home range of roughly 7 square km. The shape and area of the range changes depending on food and the annual breeding season (courting starts in May/June). Home ranges are not necessarily clearly defined and defended territories - they can overlap.  Females tend to have overlapping ranges with several males.

On the Tablelands where the habitat is mainly rainforest, the ranges are larger. This increased range leads to fewer interactions between birds.
 
The female Cassowary has turned the tables on what is mostly a maternal social structure in the animal world. The males incubate the eggs and raise the chicks. Once a clutch of eggs is laid, the female will seek out other males with which to mate. For each male that she finds, she will provide a clutch of eggs (usually 3 to 5) for him to nurture.

 

Situated midway between Cairns and Townsville, Dunk Island is located roughly 4km off the mainland Tropical North Queensland coast. The largest of the Family National Park islands, Dunk was originally named ‘coonanglebah’ by its aboriginal inhabitants meaning ‘Island of Peace and Plenty’. With more than 75% of Dunk Island made up of National Park, it still lives up to this name today.

Characterised by lush rainforest, Dunk Island’s dense flora and fauna is home to a wide range of wildlife including the famous blue Ulysses butterfly and more than 150 bird species including vulnerable and rare seabirds. A range of reptiles also call Dunk Island home including skinks, geckos, tree snakes and pythons while a vast range of marine life can be found in the reefs that fringe the island including fish, shellfish, dugongs, sea turtles and colourful corals.

With much natural landscape to enjoy, Dunk Island is a tropical haven for water sports and activities. From the palm-fringed beaches to the dense rainforest, there is an attraction to suit everyone. The Great Barrier Reef is just minutes away and the island’s National Park offers a fascinating playground just begging to be explored and enjoyed.

Dunk Island offers so much to discover right on your doorstep making it difficult to decide how to spend your time. Why not  stroll through the rainforest or snorkel in the shallows? However if you’re after a more relaxed pace, a picnic on the beach is an ideal experience and offers amazing views of the beaches and distant islands.

However you choose to spend your time on Dunk Island, you can be sure that this picturesque holiday destination won’t disappoint and it's  conveniently located close to the mainland, 

​Source:   Dunk Island
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Est in 1927, this classic Pub has all that you would want. Great meals - steak and seafood, Nth Qld Pubobilia on the walls to keep you interested for hours and has axe cut wooden beams and poles. It is one of the focal points of the area and is often visited by history buffs wanting to find the origin of the name “El Arish”.

El Arish the town, (pronounced El-A-rīsh) is nestled in the Mission Beach hinterland just off the Bruce Highway between Tully in the south and Innisfail in the north.  It is surrounded by rainforest, cane paddocks, banana farms and beautiful scenery.  
Mission Beach, Kurrimine Beach and Dunk Island are right on the door-step.

It has a tiny population (around 270) but many of the families still living in El Arish and surrounds have ancestors that came to this Soldier Settlement when it was established under "The Returned Soldiers Settlement Act of 1917". Under the Act the area was first called "The Maria Creek Soldiers' Settlement" at El Arish and was established on the 1st August 1920.

In the First World War a battle was fought at Arish on the Sinai Peninsula in 1916.   This was a significant battle with the combined British, Australian and New Zealand forces securing El Arish in December 1916, and thus successfully clearing the whole of the Sinai Peninsula of Turkish forces.  Francis Paxton Martin served in Palestine and on his return he was the supervisor of the Maria Creek soldier settlement, and he later named the town El Arish presumably in memory of that battle.
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The town of Arish (Sinai) is by a big wadi, the Wadi Al Arish, which receives flash flood water from much of north - not unlike our town of El Arish.  Arish is the capital and largest city  of the Egyptian governorate of North Sinai, as well as the largest city on the entire Sinai Peninsula, lying on the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai peninsula, 344 kilometers (214 mi) northeast of Cairo. Arish is distinguished by its clear blue water, widespread fruitful palmy wood on its coast, and its soft white sand.