KURRIMINE BEACH

KURRIMINE BEACH:
We are still On the Way to Anywhere and don’t know where we will end up before its time to turn around. Each place we visit we decide to stay an extra day or two.
To get to Kurrimine Beach you pass Tully, the wettest town in Australia. We called into see the Big Gumboot as we had seen a doco on the making of this icon. The Gumboot is the height of the record amount of rain recorded in a year which is 75 feet!! You can climb up to the top to look out over the town.
Kurrumine Beach is a lovely peaceful little village overlooking the islands. We camped in the council campground which is right on the beach and sitting in our outdoor lounge room you can see the island framed by palm trees. There were lots of coconuts so we had some fresh coconut for tea.
The tides are quite big here so the boats have to be launched by tractors.  They have to get back from there fishing trips before the low tide or they will be high and dry. It’s quite a hive of activity and we took our chairs onto the beach to watch all the boats being towed in. The big pelicans hang around waiting for some leftover fish.
There is a long reef that is exposed at low tide so of course the boats have to be very careful. The day we were there was the lowest tide for the year and you can wade out to the reef to see the coral. There were heaps of little starfish. It was fascinating to see them foraging in the puddles. We also saw some large, red and black starfish. One was stranded out of the water and its tentacles were all curled up. Brian picked it up and put it into deeper water and it uncurled. Fascinating!! We had to make sure we came back before the tide turned or it would be very hard to get back.
I went for a walk along the foreshore here and was amazed to see such modern and new houses and then realized that a lot of the homes would have been destroyed by Cyclone Larry. Every house had a new roof, even a little old beach shack. Although there has been amazing recovery of the vegetation you can see lots of evidence of the devastation. There are tree stumps and broken branches and a lot of the trees just died. I saw a photo diary of the event which makes you realize the power of the wind. The community really rallied together and life goes on.
It’s very hard to decide which is our favourite place but this one near the top of the list.