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Published: January 31st 2009
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Ahhh, Australia and the plethora of random public holidays......aside from the fact that they all seem to fall within the first half of the year, they're great. We have days off for reasons such as ANZAC Day (think Rememberance Day for the UK), Labour Day (whatever that is) and the best idea, being English, is we get a public holiday for the Queen's Birthday! Brilliant! Anyway, the holiday in January is on 26 January - or the working day following - for Australia Day.
Essentially, this is the day which commemorates (celebrates?) the landing in Australia of Cook in 1788. This year however, with the naming of the Australian of the Year, there has been some debate surrounding whether this is the correct date to celebrate the birth of Australia as we now know it. Mick Dodson is an Indiginous Leader (as well as a Monash law graduate and barrister) and is an advocate of land rights and other issues affecting indiginous people. Anyway, his being named Australian of the Year provoked some debate as to whether we are right to celebrate what indiginous people see as "Invasion Day". He suggests that it would be better to move the day
to Feb 13 to coincide with the apology to the Stolen Generations by PM Rudd last year. For those of you who want to read the debate in more detail, here's a link:
Regardless, it means a public holiday for Australia, and being a long weekend, it seemed remiss to not do anything, and with Jeff up in Queensland, and also not having dived since June, a long weekend in Far North Queensland seemed like the ideal solution. The other advantage to this, is that January in that part of Australia is within the wet season. Now, when I say wet, I don't mean the continual drizzle that the UK gets, which is cold, grey and insessant. I mean tropical monsoon type rain. The sort that sneaks up on you and within 30 seconds of starting has created flash floods. And when its not doing that, its about 30 degrees with 75%!h(MISSING)umidity. I said this was an advantage, and you may be wondering why this would ever be a good thing....well....it means that its not a comfortable time of year to visit, so many people stay away until it dries up. Which means that the flight prices Small bird
There were lots of these in Cairns....maybe the heat shrinks them? are about half what they are later in the year - just under $300 return over a public holiday weekend is too good a deal to refuse. And to make sure that I didn't have to spend half of one of my days off travellings (Syd - Cns = 3 hours), I took off the Friday and flew up from Sydney on the Thursday night. Qantas has a very convenient 7:30pm flight which gets in at 9:30pm (due to daylight saving). Ideal.
Cairns had had power cut on the Thursday evening, but was back up and running by the time I arrived. But it did mean that many places had closed for the evening and not reopened. Anyway, as it was so hot and sticky, a cold beer was the order of the evening and Jeff and I went for a wander around town to find an open bar....which of course we managed, and spent a little while in PJ O'Briens and wandered back to the hotel via Rattle & Hum. Friday morning was again hot and humid, but with huge, rolling clouds. We had breakfast and a mid morning snack of gelato, and we found a bus to
take us to Port Douglas.
Port Douglas (as you'll know from my entry last year) is about an hour's drive north of Cairns. There are a couple of options for travel up there - you either drive yourself or you can get a minibus transfer. We elected the second option and for just under $50 return you get collected from your hotel and delivered to your new abode. We used
but there are a couple of other options.
We stayed at Central Hotel in Port. Effectively, this is THE place to drink at, as well as having good qulity food at reasonable prices. The Central Hotel dates back to the nineteenth century, although the current owner has spent considerable time and money doing the place up - with a balcony bar (complete with comfy couches), outdoor big screens for sport, live music stage and large seating area. Helen, the hotel's manager runs a tight ship, and is also an absolute gem to boot. In fact, in the 3 nights we were there I don't think I met anyone associated with the Hotel that wasn't genuinely really lovely and friendly
Friday afternoon we went out and about to book our dive for the Saturday. Now I knew it was going to be quiet, but considering it was a long weekend, I thought there may be some more people around....but when we booked our dive, not only did we get a discount, but we were the only divers on the boat.....ok, so there was a caveat that it might change, but being as this was booked at 4pm, we took the gamble that it wouldn't change too much for the worse. After a casual meal at another of Port's hotels, we headed back to the balcony bar at Central and sat with a large g&t and watched the end of the tennis. Jeff, having worked up there in a previous life, knew every second person.....!
Diving on Saturday was a late affair - 8:40am for a 9am departure. We'd elected to spend the day with Calypso
and although there were a couple more people on the boat than when we booked, we were still the only two divers, and the other 18 guests were snorkellers.....and given the size of the boat, spread over 3 decks, there was heaps of room for us all. I was even impressed with the toilets - which on a dive boat are usually small, dark, smelly and hot - which each had windows that opened giving a lovely breeze, and making them light and airy. We headed out to the Opal Reef which is about 75 mins from the marina.
The first dive was amazing. I'm sorry to say that this trip I didn't take an underwater camera, but the sealife was amazing....within 5 minutes of descending on the first dive there was a white tipped reef shark just lounging around on the seabed, not too phased by the three of us at all. There were sea slugs, clown fish, trigger fish, even cuttlefish. The coral too was vibrant and much more alive than I experienced last April. Over the 3 dives throughout the day, we saw so much life it was incredible. Added to that, the water was a pleasant 29 degrees, and we lucked in - there was barely a breeze in sight, which meant it was about as choppy as your average bathtub. Combined with blue sky and blazing sunshine. Just perfect.
Sunday morning we visited the markets - which were the same as many
of the other markets I've been to over here - craft stalls, random stuff (wooden artifacts, clothing etc), fresh coconuts and mangoes and the occasional person offering a massage. We actually had an hour massage each booked for later that morning....mmmm......that kind of filled the morning. The afternoon we headed down to Four Mile Beach and wandered along the shoreline, watching the crabs scuttle across the sand. The beach was fairly quiet - a combination of the time of year and the fact that its stinger season. Still, a very pleasant walk, which ran up a hunger for dinner and cocktails that night in Zinc
. All I can say, is YUM. I skipped the started, but stole one of Jeff's oysters. Now I'm not the world's biggest oyster fan, but those were particularly tasty and especially fresh. I had lamb cutlets for main which were done perfectly - and we accompanied that with a bottle of Cape Mentelle SBS. All very luxurious - not cheap mind (but then nowhere really is in Port) but well worth it.
The only time we saw rain was on the Monday morning as we were having a final lie in.....and it just poured for about an hour, and then stopped and by the time the bus picked us up, was just clearing up again for the day. It was a perfectly timed weekend - great weather, awesome diving, good food and lovely, genuine people. A definite to recommend to everyone and one for the list of places to go back to.
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