The cassowary crossing signs around Mission Beach are not a joke, and the bird they warn you about is not a small one. This stretch of coast between Tully and Innisfail is one of the last strongholds of the southern cassowary, a dinosaur-looking creature with a blue head and a horned casque, and the rainforest that runs right down to the sand here is part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage area. Few places on earth put ancient forest and a palm-fringed beach this close together.
Mission Beach is really a string of small settlements, Wongaling Beach, South Mission, Bingil Bay and Mission Beach itself, strung along about fourteen kilometres of shore, with Dunk Island lying just offshore. The name goes back to an Aboriginal mission established in the area in the early twentieth century and destroyed by a cyclone in 1918. Cyclones are part of the local story; Larry in 2006 and Yasi in 2011 both hit hard, and you can still read their marks in the forest canopy.
The roads in from the Bruce Highway, through El Arish or from Tully, are lovely tropical rides: narrow, winding through cane fields and dense rainforest, often wet, sometimes slick with fallen leaves and fruit. Speed limits are low for good reason, so take the bends gently and look well ahead for those birds. Traffic is mostly local, with backpacker vans and the odd tour bus in the dry season.
Wongaling Beach has a fuel station and supermarket, and there are cafés and places to eat spread along the coast. Tully, about eleven kilometres inland, is the working town of the district, surrounded by sugar cane and bananas, and it likes to remind visitors that it is among the wettest towns in Australia, with a giant golden gumboot to prove it.
Come in the dry season, roughly May to October, when the humidity eases and the sky clears. In the wet, expect warm downpours that arrive suddenly and leave everything steaming. Swimming in the sea is a seasonal question too: from late spring box jellyfish make stinger suits or netted areas wise. Watch the light go gold over Dunk Island with a cold drink in your hand, and you will understand why people come here and forget to leave.