Cassowary Spotting

Mission Beach is one of the best places in Australia to see a southern cassowary in the wild. These extraordinary birds — standing up to 1.8 meters tall, with a bony casque on the head and brilliant blue and red neck wattles — are shy but curious, and the combination of intact rainforest and low traffic density around Mission Beach gives them somewhere to live that brings them regularly into view.

The most reliable spots are the walking tracks at dawn and dusk, particularly around the lower sections of the Mission Beach walk and the forest edges along the Cassowary Coast drives north and south of town. Cassowaries are powerful animals and should not be approached closely or fed — they can be aggressive when startled, and the population here has learned to associate humans with food, which creates problems for both species. If you see one, stop, give it space, and watch.

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A story
The southern cassowary is listed as endangered, with an estimated 1,200–1,500 individuals remaining in Australia. The Mission Beach area has one of the highest densities in the country because the rainforest here grows directly to the beach with almost no development gap. About 40 cassowaries are thought to live within the local rainforest fragments — and unlike wildlife in most national parks, these ones regularly cross roads and wander through gardens.