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Published: December 10th 2022
1. Port Douglas Marina
Port Douglas Marina before the clouds rolled inWe set off for Cape Tribulation this morning, another lovely sunny (very hot!) day although they were predicting cloud and potential thunder and lightening today. Our accomodation has an underground car park which we thought would be great for keeping the car cool. Apparently, this is an impossible feat in this area and even in the subterranean car park it was 32 degrees!
The drive out was once again on the lovely, picturesque road that you essentially have to go back up again once you get out of Port Douglas in order to get up to Cape Tribulation. We passed a few places that we thought would be good to stop off at on our return journey time permitting.
We were enjoying the drive and about an hour in, as we were approaching the Daintree Ferry we were flagged down by a guy in the road who told us there had been an accident on the road ahead and they’d had to call in emergency services so weren’t sure when the road would be open again. This is the one road in and out of Cape Tribulation, so we turned around and decided to visit Daintree village for a
2. Ute Advert
I just love their use of old trucks for advertising here while, hoping it would be clear when we got back.
Daintree village is quite a small place! We drove down the main road which had a café for Roy’s coffee fix, it was also the departure point for a river cruise to see the crocodiles. Although these would’ve been ‘wild’ crocs, we’d had our fill of them at Hartley’s so decided we’d drive back and see what was happening on the single road into Cape Tribulation.
The queue was still there, and after waiting in it for about 10mins or so, watching several emergency vehicles arriving we figured it must be quite bad. Someone who’d wandered down for a peak reported back to us that the car they could see was off the left hand side of the road so thought, now that the police were on scene, we’d be able to pass soon. Waiting a bit longer it became obvious that this wasn’t the case, the police were turning people around and saying it would be 3-4 hours! Obviously we were pretty disappointed as this was our one chance to see this area, but I think this was a minor inconvenience considering the poor people involved in
3. WWII Bomb Site
The WWII bomb site, where the only person on the eastern seaboard got injured during WWII whatever was going on up that road.
Trying to make the most of a bad situation we decided to revisit the places we’d seen on the way there. First stop was a sign advertising a Mangrove Nature Park, sounded interesting so we pulled in…… and were the only car in the car park which seemed odd. On further investigation, the place was very dark and looked like it had been closed a while, there was a sign when you got to the door saying they were open for accommodation only. So that was a bust.
After that, we headed for the World War II bomb site, which was another brown, place of interest sign we’d passed on the way, we drove a few km’s down the road then screeched to a halt when we saw a rock carving that looked sort of like a bomb, with a plaque attached to it. Sure enough, this was it. They’d put the ‘monument’ there and fenced off a field behind it where the bomb had hit. This was now a very normal looking grassy field with a big pile of junk in the middle of it! Not quite what we’d envisioned!
4. Wildlife Habitat
One of the many birds in the Wildlife Habitat, Port Douglas Moving on, we went to the Mossman Gorge, not really knowing what this was but thinking it would hopefully be quite scenic. We pulled in to a very busy car park, then found you had to get a bus to the gorge and that would cost over $13 each. We decided against this in the end so just headed back to the car.
At this point, we’d run out of stuff to see! So we admitted defeat and headed back to Port Douglas thinking we’d just take advantage of our swim out room and spend some time in the pool….. only to see the black clouds rolling in and thunder starting to rumble in the hills around us.
Do you ever get those days when you just know everything you do/touch/say is DOOMED! I’m pretty sure this was one of those days!
Just as we were driving back into Port Douglas we spotted the Wildlife Habitat Park which we’d passed many times over our few days here. We decided to give it a go and I’m glad we did.
This is a really impressive place, as you walked in they had a large aviary with
5. Wildlife Habitat
a Frilled-neck lizard cockatiels and several other birds I can’t name! There were also blue tongued lizards in a fairly open pen which meant you could get up close to them. Further in, they have a massive aviary, it was HUGE!, filled with so many different types of birds, fish and turtles. It was amazing. They even had a walkway and a tower which meant you could walk around in the tops of the trees inside the aviary (see, told you it was big!).
Joining this to the rest of the park, there was a nocturnal habitat, in here there were free flying owls, possums, snakes, frogs – these were thankfully locked away! We timed this right and bumped into a Warder that was about to feed the Owl with a dead 1 day old chick, so got to see that. Emerging out the other side, there was an open expanse with large grey kangaroo’s and small wallabies, along with the dreaded emu or two. Thankfully they left us alone and didn’t seem quite as food motivated as the last bunch we encountered! I’d talked Roy into buying a bag of food, so we fed some of the kangaroo’s and quite a
6. Wildlife Habitat
This bird was amazing and let you get so close few of them had their little Joey’s in their pouches, ranging from very pink looking new Joey’s up to one that probably didn’t fit in there anymore but hadn’t been kicked out yet!
There were sections for crocodiles, salties and freshwater – and also a section with Cassowary’s. They had plenty of koala’s, tree kangaroo’s and a wombat. It’s not the biggest park, but even just the main aviary is definitely worth the visit.
The only downside to all this was it was absolutely BOILING, and I don’t just mean hot, we literally didn’t have any moisture left inside our bodies, as fast as you replaced it, it was leaking out – even my ears were sweating and I didn’t know that they could sweat!
After a couple of hours, we headed out through the gift shop which was like entering a large fridge, it was heaven! We may’ve spent a lot longer than needed in here! Once we’d cooled slightly, we went back out into the sauna like day outside, jumped in the hot car and headed back to our room then had a nice long session in the pool. Even though the clouds had been
7. Wildlife Habitat
Not sure what this was but loved the colouors getting worse all day, we never got the rain they’d predicted.
Although it wasn’t the day we’d planned, and we’re still disappointed to have missed the chance to head up to Cape Tribulation, it turned out to be a good day.
Our time in Port Douglas has felt very holiday like, a nice relaxing pace instead of the large distances between stops, Roy has even gone for a post dinner swim in the dark. But as they say, all good things must come to an end. It does feel a little like we’re now on our way back to the airport, but we still have about 2800km’s to cover over the next 12 days going down the coast, plenty still to see and do.
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