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Published: August 1st 2010
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After enjoying 5 nights at pretty Clifton Beach we headed north along the Captain Cook Highway for about an hour to Port Douglas. Our home for the next 4 nights was called "At the Mango Tree Holiday Apartments" - not sure why it's not just called "Mango Tree" but anyway... Not the flashest of establishments and only selected because there wasn't a lot of other options available. Turned out to be quite good, with a tennis court, nice pool and across the road to the beach.
It looked like half of Australia is in town for the school holidays - Port Douglas was just humming with people. The main Street, Macrossan St was very pretty and packed with lots of shops, tour offices, cafes and restaurants. The kids favourite was the bright green icecream shop selling 42 different flavours. The small Coles supermarket was actually better stocked than the bigger ones down in Cairns.
We had a couple of lovely meals out; One at the Combined Club which has the best setting on the wharf overlooking the inlet and another at this little Thai restaurant on Mocrossan (unbelieveably quick service). We were finding that the price of eating out
was prohibitave. The kids now eat as much as us and at upwards of $28 for a main course we were eating in most nights.
The highlight for the kids was when we had breakfast with the birds at the Wildlife Habitat. This was really good value for money and we all enjoyed our morning wandering around the enclosures. We saw some very, very cool birds and spend ages patting and feeding the kangaroos and wallabies (Although I think the best part for Ashleigh was once again, the FOOD!).
From a grownup point of view, the drive up to Cape Tribulation was our highlight - the kids thought it was boring after an hour and decided that all the Cassawary signs were a "joke" as we never saw any. We crossed the Daintree River on the car ferry and drove thru the most beautiful rainforest for mile after mile, every now and then spotting the ocean. The weather was overcast and raining off an on during the day so we only did a couple of the walks and chose to bypass the award winning Interpretation centre (quite pricey). It reminded us a lot of the Coromandel. The were
LOTS and LOTS of Wicked Campers and very dirty 4WD's returning from further up north. Managed to pat a Bat - cute! On the return journey we detoured up to the Mossman Gorge but no-one was keen for a swim.
On Sunday there is a market in Port Douglas so we're up early and keen to check it out. Well, I don't know if we have been spoilt by our prior market experiences, but this one was just lacking and we were all disappointed. There was a lot of jewellery (some very good, but most just tacky), a couple of juice stands, some art and clothing but it just didn't live up to it's reputation as a "must visit" attraction. Later that day we decided to hire a couple of tandem bikes and took them for a hoon down the 4-mile beach and around Port Douglas - now that was worthwhile and fun!
On our last day we finally took a chance on the weather and went out on a boat trip to the Great Barrier Reef. This hadn't been quite as straight forward as we had planned due to the windy conditions and busy school holiday period.
We had to take what was available and go for it. Turns out that we had an absolutely fabulous day on the AristoCat boat, visiting three different sites out on the Agincourt reef. And the best part of all - I didn't get seasick! The snorkelling was just fantastic. Lots and lots of different fish - some quite large (Steve & Ash saw a shark) and the coral at one of the sites in particular was just beautiful. Well and truly worth the money. Shame we didn't see any whales or turtles - still on the bucket list...
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