Bingil Bay
Located in Dyirbalŋan Country, 4.5 kilometres north of (North) Mission Beach, 34 kilometres south of Innisfail, 108 kilometres south of Cairns and 177 kilometres north-northwest of Townsville, Bingil Bay lies at the northern end of the coastal enclave collectively known as Mission Beach, with (North) Mission, Wongaling and South Mission Beach to the south.
The area, previously known as Clump Point, was home to the Cutten family, who acquired several homestead selections in 1888 and established Australia's first commercial tea plantation on their estate, which also produced coffee, mangoes, bananas, pineapples and other tropical fruit. Frederick Cutten reputedly named the bay using an Aboriginal word meaning a good camping ground around 1888.
In 1919, a cyclone destroyed most of the estate, and although the homestead was rebuilt, the rest of the area was neglected. Remnant tea and coffee bushes survived as the rainforest recovered. When Dr Allan Maruff found descendants of the original tea planting in 1958, he used seedlings from the plants to establish the Nerada Tea plantation.
In the meantime, the area remained isolated — a 10-kilometre overland connection to El Arish completed in 1921 was a most-of-the-day affair for horse-drawn vehicles until 1936, when an upgrade reduced the travel time to 30 minutes.
