A Short History of Mission Beach

Mission Beach is a beautiful 14km stretch of coconut palm tree lined beach on the Coral Coast, 139km South of Cairns. It lies within the Cassowary Coast region of Queensland.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans the area was occupied by people from the Djiru Aboriginal language group.

Lt. James Cook passed these shores on 9th June 1770 and named Dunk Island off the coast of Mission Beach after the Earl of Halifax, George Montague Dunk. However, the area was first explored by Edmund Kennedy and his party who landed just to the south of Mission Beach in 1848.

In 1872 it was alleged by two sailors (Wilson and Sullivan), that the captain (Stratman) and some of the crew of the ill-fated Maria which was wrecked in a "typhoon", were killed and eaten by natives north of Tam O'Shanter Point, a headland located on South Mission Beach.

The first white settlers, the Cutten brothers, arrived in 1882 and established crops including coffee, mangoes, coconuts and bananas.

Mission Beach was named after the Hull River Mission, an Aboriginal mission which was set up at South Mission Beach by the Queensland government in 1914 to house the remainder of the local indigenous population. In 1918 the mission was destroyed and lives were lost when a cyclone ripped through the area.

Skip a few years and by the 1980s Mission Beach had become an important tourist destination. On 20th March 2006, Cyclone Larry caused extensive damage to the town and on 3rd February 2011, Cyclone Yasi destroyed much of the town. It had wind gusts of 290 km/hr and Dunk Island took the brunt of it.Read more