Mission Beach, Australia

After branching east off the Bruce Highway a couple of kilometres past Tully, a loop road runs 18km through canefields and patches of rainforest to Mission Beach, the collective name for four peaceful hamlets strung out along a fourteen-kilometre stretch of sand. The coastal forest is home to the largest surviving cassowary population in Australia, while not far offshore lies little Dunk Island, whose idyllic beaches and rainforest track make it a pleasant day-trip.

The area owes its name to the former Hull River Mission, destroyed by a savage cyclone in 1918. In 2006, Cyclone Larry stripped the rainforest canopy and flattened farms between here and Cairns, wiping out the entire year's banana crop – though the effects will be visible for years, the forest is already well on the way to recovery.