Mission Beach is a coastal town and locality in the Cassowary Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. In the 2021 census, the locality of Mission Beach had a population of 1,014 people.

Mission Beach is bounded on the east by the Coral Sea.

Clump Point (17°51′21″S 146°07′12″E / 17.8558°S 146.1200°E / -17.8558; 146.1200 (Clump Point)) is the northern end of a sandy beach 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) long facing the Coral Sea which runs south to Tam O'Shanter Point in South Mission Beach at the southern end.

The region has been inhabited for at least the past 5,000 years by a rainforest dwelling people collectively known as the Djiru people. Remains of middens, fish traps, rock-shelter paintings and ceremonial sites are located around Mission Beach and Dunk Island. Djiru people made large wooden swords and built wet-season villages consisting of dome-shaped huts thatched with palm fronds and paperbark.

Lieutenant James Cook sailed through the area in 1770, naming Dunk Island. Clump Point was descriptively named in 1848 by Captain Owen Stanley of the Royal Navy survey ship HMS Rattlesnake. On board was the Cape York Peninsula exploration party led by Edmund Kennedy which was landed to the south of the region to begin their ill-fated overland journey. After the disembarkation of Kennedy's group, Captain Stanley anchored off Dunk Island and he and his crew remained in the vicinity for ten days. They traded with the local Djiru people until a crew member shot at them after being prevented from entering a nearby village.

On 26 February 1872, the brig Maria carrying 75 people of a gold prospecting expedition to New Guinea was wrecked upon Bramble Reef. The survivors escaped the sinking ship on 3 boats and 2 rafts. Two of the boats made it safely to the nearest British settlement of Cardwell, but the other three craft were washed up on the shoreline at and around what is now Mission Beach. Up to ten of these crew members, including the captain, were found to have been murdered by Aboriginal people residing in this region. Lieutenant Sabben of the Royal Navy was sent to recover the captain's boat and find any survivors. Upon reaching the beached boat they were attacked by about 120 Aboriginal men. In resisting the attack, 8 native people were killed. Fearing further attacks, Magistrate Brinsley Sheridan, ordered Sub-Inspector Robert Arthur Johnstone of the Native Police "to inflict decisive punishment". Johnstone and his troopers were significantly aided by another Royal Navy officer in Captain John Moresby who provided additional armed marines and a large schooner. Moresby described how "several unfortunate blacks were shot down by the native troopers, who showed an unrestrained ferocity that disgusted our officers". A six-year-old boy was taken during this raid and sent to England by the "kind act" of Lieutenant Francis Hayter. The boy died there from pneumonia three years later.

Johnstone and his troopers, together with armed sailors and volunteer riflemen, scoured the coast from Cardwell north to Cooper Point, searching every Aboriginal camp they came across for any traces of the men. Newspapers reported that Johnstone's detachment of Native Police killed a total of 93 local Aboriginal people in the Maria reprisals. Accusations of Johnstone and others having "punished the innocent together with the guilty" and partaking in "slaughtering whole camps, not only of men, but of women and children" even reached the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, Robert Herbert. The claims were dismissed by Lord Normanby, Governor of Queensland, on the grounds that the Aboriginal people of the north "are numerous, savage, treacherous, and very commonly cannibals".

Various localities around Mission Beach were named after entities and events involved in the shipwreck of the Maria including Maria Creek and the Johnstone River.^{[citation needed]}