Cassowary Coast - Littoral Rainforest trail

As you travel along the beautiful Cassowary Coast from Mission Beach to Bingil Bay, you will find yourself immersed in the lush tropical landscape of the Wet Tropics Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. As well as appreciating its natural beauty, this journey will let you unlock the region’s remarkable heritage treasures.

The Cutten Brothers walking track at Clump Point is an exhilarating start to your heritage journey. The story of the first settlers in the area, the Cuttens, unfolds along this educational rainforest track. If you are lucky, you might catch a glimpse of the remnant tea and coffee plants from the family’s 1890s plantation, both rumoured to be giant species. Did you know seedlings from this area helped to build the Nerada tea empire?

The Cutten family’s graves can be found further north towards Bicton Hill, on a portion of the Cuttens’ original selection.

Continue north along the beach fringed by rare littoral rainforest, until you reach Ninney Rise and John B?sst Memorial, on Alexander Drive. Ninney Rise was home to artist and conservationist John B?sst in the 1960s. The house became the birthplace of 1960s environmental activism. The 1967 ‘Save the Reef’ campaign was run from the house, in an effort to protect the reef from attempts to harvest coral for lime and from chemical run-off from agriculture.

Follow the Esplanade north for approximately 2km to reach Garner’s Beach burial ground. Here, you can visit the graves of another settler family, the Garners, who arrived in Bingil Bay in 1911 to manage a sawmill.

Take a day trip to Dunk Island, from Clump Point Jetty, and walk in the footsteps of the ’Beachcomber‘, author and naturalist EJ (Ted) Banfield. He wrote a number of books while living on this tropical island paradise, including ‘Confessions of a Beachcomber‘. His grave lies within the Banfield Memorial Reserve on Dunk Island.

For the more adventurous, the wreck of the Lady Bowen is a great way to experience the coast’s maritime heritage. The wreck can be visited via commercial boat services from Mission Beach and is a popular dive site for suitably qualified divers.