And so, to Port Douglas
- Trevor Clark
- May 10, 2024
- 11 min read
We left Paul and Sheila’s and forced Miss Maui around the Brisbane Gateway Bypass to the Airport. We said our sad farewells to her and flew to Cairns, arriving in the dark. We had a one hour drive to Port Douglas and as our driver indicated, we were missing out on one of the most scenic drives in Australia.
On arrival and having dropped our cases at about 9:00pm we headed down to the bar for a celebratory drink. Sorry, we are closed, said the one girl clearing up. So we borrowed umbrellas and headed into town, not wishing to give up easily on our bouyant mood. We wanted to end our trip in style. We got to the centre of town in about 10 minutes, having walked in the darkness and rain, yes it was raining again, to find virtually everything shut. A waitress in a restaurant that was just shutting said Paddy's Bar might be open further up the high stree finally found a bar and had a drink, but this was not turning out to be the Grand Finale to our travels we had hoped for. We snuggled under our umbrellas, strolled back to the hotel and went to bed, both wondering how things would work out in the morning?
We really didn’t fully appreciate the splendour of our room or the hotel, until we woke up in daylight.
We had an apartment, two double bedrooms, kitchen, lounge, bathroom, utility room and terrace with direct pool access. This did take a bit of effort to negotiate, including old people sounds like oooh, aaarh and ehee as we got in and out of the water, but it was a wonderful feature of the room. Better still, Sue pointed out we could swim from the room to the restaruant bar in the morning, I could have a lovely coffee while we sat in the pool and then we could swim back to the room. After a loud chorus of oooh, aaarh and ehee we would both be back on our terrace.
On our first day we strolled done to the marina to check out Quicksivler Diving in readiness for our dive/snorkel trip on Monday.
We had drinks at the marina, then strolled into town and were very relieved to find it busy, buzzy and had plenty of fellow tourists around. We found a little restaurant called Epicurean that did "simply beautiful food and wine" in their own woods. We shared some prawns and a Charcuterie Boards with loads of lovely little things to feast on. Although I didn't have the courage at the start, I also decided to end on 3 local fresh oysters, with white wine and finely chopped shallots which I really enjoyed! I could see Sue becoming more and more interested in sharing, but was probably only finally persuaded as the third one disappeared. Maybe next time.
We planned our first excursion to the Daintree Rainforest for Sunday. We travelled with a small group and Sue, as a precuation against travel sickness, took two tablets of an Australian anti-seasickness remedie she got locally. Her Stugeron from home had been exhausted by now, on helicopters, jet boat trips, ferry crossings, whale watching and the boat trip to swim with dolphins.
It took about an hour to drive to the Mossaman Gorge, our first stop. By this time the tablets had kicked in and Sue could hardly keep awake or get off the minibus. She staggered around looking totally drunk and had to cling to my arm to walk anywhere. I'm not sure what our companions thought, other than a bit more tonic with the gin next time might be good! Everytime we returned to the minibus, Sue feel asleep and was seriously wondering where she had been for most of the morning. There were signs of sobbering up /returning to normal by lunch time.
Rod, our tour guide, was a retired teacher who was totally passionate about wild-life, the forest and life in general. He kept gesticulating in all directions and saying out loud "look at that""Oh wow, look at this" "isn't this just wonderful". Sometimes, when he turned round and found 10 of us tagging along behind him, he actually looked a bit surprised as if he got so lost in the moment he'd forgotten he was guiding a group. He brought everything more alive and his knowledge was just encyclopaedic. It was just that his mannerisms kept reminding me of the late David Bellamy OBE botanist, or more likely Lenny Henry's impressions of him.
We then moved on to the Daintree River and a boat trip to look at Crocodiles. We again had a great skipper and were lucky enough to see Corc's, one of which was about 3+ metres long. He had originally been mistaken for a tree trunk, but then we got up close enough to see his teeth as he smiled watching us carefully. His name was appropriately "Scare Face".
David, sorry, I mean Rod picked us up on the north side of the Daintree River and we headed north to Cape Tribulation. With 3+ metre crocodiles hanging around in the mangroves that surrounded the beach here, it felt a bit more like Cape Fear. This part of the journey included a 20 minute wait at a set of traffic lights to head over a mountain pass. We were previously unaware, but this part of the coast suffered two cyclones in November/December time last year, followed by about 2 to 3 metres of rain in a couple of days. This resulted in lots of landslides, taking out at least half the road in several locations over the pass. We learnt later that the main road from Caines to Port Douglas had suffered 102 landslides along its length and had been shut for 2 months. People had to travel from Port Douglas to Cairns by boat if they needed to make the journey. Our route to Cape Tribulation had only just openned up again and it was very exciting to travel on the little bit of road that was left clinging to the side of the mountain, looking down hundreds of feet where the other half of the road had disappeared too! Rod was still up front driving and waxing lyrical about the beauty of the forest, which I think was just a diversionary tactic to take our minds of the drop.
These were the signs at the entrance to the beach!
After heading back south and crossing the Daintree River by ferry, we stopped for lunch at a lovely jungle retreat. Some brave foke even doned swim suits and swam in the nearby river. I'm afraid the already used reassurances that crocodiles do not venture this far up stream did not fully make one at ease, even just paddling.
I will now leave you with a few of photos of the Daintree Rain Forest. Enjoy.
Now we get to the moment I've been waiting for. We are off to dive and snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef with Quicksilver out of Port Douglas marina.
Sue, was very reluctant to get drunk before the trip, sorry, I mean, take the Australian seasickness tablets. This resulted in her taking her last Stugeron tablet and hoping this would be enough. It was a one and a half hour trip to the outer reef, most of which was spent not talking, sitting very still and staring ahead for Sue. This was a successful ploy and we made it to the floating pontoon that Quicksilver have anchored out at the reef without illness, which was not the case for all passengers. The trimaran boat that took us out has a capacity of 420 passengers, but only had about 250 on board. It travels at about 35 knots, which for a boat of its size is pretty impresive. We had three and a half hours out on the pontoon, I had 2 dives and Sue went in the semi-submersible reef viewing vessel and snorkelled.
As the only qualified diver on the trip, or at least the only one booked to do dives, I had a one-to-one with my dive leader. It was a truely once in a lifetime fantastic experience. I hired a protective case for my GoPro to record the dive. We went first to the sea anenome where a couple of Nemo's were hanging out. My leader took the GoPro to record me with Nemo, looked confused then handed it back. He wrote on his white board "Memory Card Full". This is me through and through. Greatest opportunity of a life time to capture a video of me diving on the GBR and my memory card is full. I had to forgot this and got on with viewing the fish, coral, giant clams and an aray of tiny beautifully coloured tropical fish. Underneath the pontoon, we saw the bigger fish, Baracuda and massive Sea Bass before exiting back to the platform.
I had one hour before my next dive. I quickly went snorkelling with Sue, which was also fantastic experience with loads to see. On our return to the platform they were starting the fish feeding display, and we swam through a swarm of massive Red Bass hoping we wouldnt be mistaken as fish food. The Red Bass attract attention by hovering across the surface with just their tails in the water. Once out, I spent a frantic 10 minutes trying to clear my GoPro memory card, getting a lunch to be put aside and then back for my second dive. Yakouti and I kitted up, demisted our masks, descended down the guide rope and headed out to the reef, when I realised I had forgotten to bring the GoPro! Shouting at a lead diver in 4 metres of water is pretty difficult, but he heard me and we headed back to get it. I then managed to record most of my second dive which is a treat I will hold back on for those that come to the 3 or 4 day photographic exhibition we will be doing on our return.
Before leaving the platform we had our lunch aboard Quicksilver IV and then returned to Port Douglas. With all the adrenaline now pumping through our veins the return was very smooth and fast. Being back at 4:30pm, we decided to go out on the town before the 8:30 curfew. What a change from the first night. We went to Salsa a highly recommended Tapas venue. Oh Sorry, might be able to get you in at 8:15, 8:30pm. We knew this meant sitting and eating on our own with the lights out while the staff shut up. No thanks. The next place was the same, then we found a stylish, slightly more expensive restaurant that had one table for two, which we grabbed. We then made up our own Tapas selection from the starters and gave a french sounding old waiter our choices. What, no Main? (In a bit of a French / Australian accent). "I will split these starters as entrees and these as mains!" then he turned with a flourish and disappeared, for what felt like a very long time. A waitress appeared with drinks finally and Sue asked if we could move to a better table in the open front, to which she replied "Its my first day, I will have to ask someone" (In a much less well developed French accent). She never came back, so we were concerned she may have been fired by the older waiter for asking whether the Tapas eating British could get a better table.
When our entrees and mains did arrive, they were delicous, even if they were served with typical French distain by old grummpy. Sorry, that seems very politically incorrect even to me for a number of reasons.
The next day we walked down to the beach and strolled along taking in the sea air, beautiful quartz sand and the coconut palms that fringed the back of the beach. It was like something out of a paradise Island scene. Obviously the stinger and crocodile net where poeple could swim within was a small blemish, and also introduced that nagging doubt as to whether we really wanted to walk all of the 4 miles of "Four Mile Beach". About half way as the numbers of humans dwindled down to nothing, we decided to head back. As someone pointed out, given we were staying away from the waters edge, there was more probablity of being killed by a coconut falling on our heads. We continued back equidistance from the waters edge and the leathal coconut palms.
For our final night in Port Douglas we booked a sunset sail on a large Catamaran. We were welcomed on board with a glass of fizz and canapies, which was all very nice. There were probably about 30 guests, a skipper, two stewardesses and a company photographer. We left harbour with a 10/15 knot wind and started sailing as we left the channel. There was a bit of swell, but not much and the photographer was looking decidedly green. The skies then darkened and the wind incressed to about 20/25 knots. We really started to go now, but no one was having their photo taken as the photographer had moved to the front outside and was hanging over the rails. The stewdesses brought round drinks and canapies and kept the photographer supplied with a steady flow of new sick bags, most of which he succeeded to fill. Sue was sat quietly, not really interested in the setting sun, the drinks or the canapies, but doing way better than the photographer. I last saw him leaving the boat, loaded down with cameras and bags, hair disshevelled and still white as a sheet. He looked very sorry for himself as he sloped away. To add insult to injury Sue wondered if he would have had to pay the company to come on board to sell photos to passengers. Even I felt sorry for him now.
Sue told one of the stewdesses about the effects of the Australian seasickness tablets on the bus tour, which was why she had not taken any this evening. She kindly brought her some ice cubes to suck on, which helped. She also said that she would take the Australian tablets when bad weather was expected, but would only take a quarter of a tablet, otherwise they made her feel very dizzy and drousy. We now realised why Sue had such a struggle after two tablets!
Our time in Port Douglas was coming to an end, but so has our whole nine and a half week adventure of Singapore, New Zealand and Australia. We hope you have had as much fun following our antics as we have had living them. We have been so lucky, nearly everything has gone to plan, when it hadn't things seemed to have worked out for the better. Low cloud in Franz Josef meant our helicopter flight was cancelled and refunded, only for us to end up flying over Franz Josef, Fox, Tasman Glaciers as well as Mount Cook a few days later in the bluest of skies. Our original camper van pick up in Melbourne, had a broken side door and broken shower door. When these couldn't be fixed they reluctantly considered an alternative to end up giving us a brand new van that had just been delivered with only 59km on the clock. We were very disappointed when we were told we couldnt keep this van after our break in Sydney, but the local girl at Sydney depot said she would try and reallocate it and did. I know there are those amongst you that will be saying - Oh there you go, Sue's magic touch again! How does she do it. I'm not going to pretend I know, but I'm not going to knock it either. Anyway, I don't want to jinx it at this stage. We still have a 24 hour flight with two changes to go with our luggage booked through from Cairns to London. There's plenty of scope for that to balance out all the good luck we have had to date.
However, I can now report that all the connections worked, the flights were great and to our amazement our bags arrived with us!
Just before we say Bon Voyage, I will leave you and us with a few final memories of our time in Port Douglas and here's to next time.
Lots of Love,
Sue and Trev xxx
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