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Published: March 17th 2015
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It was a very Queensland welcome - we landed in Cairns, came off the plane and there was a cane toad on the air bridge. It's the first one I've seen, but as to whether I can consider it in its natural habitat, usually one of my criteria, is another thing again. After all, Cairns airport is hardly the great outdoors!
The weekend in Port Douglas had been booked some time ago. It was the shoulder season so whether the weather would cooperate was to be another matter. Either way I was confident that it would still be warm at least. I admit though, the prospect of a cyclone hadn't crossed my mind. I was checking the weather forecast at least a week out. It didn't look promising, solid rain from Thursday - Tuesday. But then a couple of days before the Friday departure, the weather news became even grimmer. A cyclone had developed off the coast of Northern Queensland and it was heading for land. It was a category 2 cyclone, expected to become a category 3, making landfall on Thursday. All of Far North Queensland, down as far as Port Douglas, was on alert.
I wasn't sure
what to do. A holiday with a cyclone didn't sound like a lot of fun to me. However after a call to Qantas and one to the hotel it seemed that flights were still landing in Cairns and as everything was pre-paid canceling now would see us lose everything. So, it seemed like a holiday with Cyclone Nathan was on the cards after all.
And actually it wasn't so bad after all. We arrived on Friday afternoon and to my surprise it wasn't raining. It was very humid and blowing a gale (not surprisingly), but the heat was quite lovely.
We arrived at the hotel in the early afternoon and while the sun may not have been out, the beachy holiday feeling struck anyway. First order of the day was a swim in the resort pool. Yep, even me, not usually known for my swimming prowess, jumped into the pool with a little fake beach.
The rain came and went over the next couple of days. We were glad to have booked a rental car on Friday night, as we drove into town for dinner despite it being a 5 minute walk, but luckily avoiding the torrential
downpour. We weren’t so lucky the next day. It seemed like the rain had stopped for a bit so we decided to go for a walk along the beach. I couldn’t believe what the beach looked like. Last time it was a long beautiful, palm-fringed beach with golden sand and blue waters. This time the cyclone winds had whipped up the seas to a dirty brown and the beach was thick with seaweed. Just as we decided to turn back to return to the hotel, I felt the first little spits of rain. Within seconds, someone had turned up the volume and it was like being in a power shower. We were completely drenched!
We also went for a drive towards Mossman to explore the scenery. Just south of the Daintree forest, it’s a sugar-cane farming area. I thought it best to keep quiet about my new sugar-free program and my views about the evils of sugar!
To my surprise we saw a sign for a winery along the way. I couldn’t imagine grapes growing very well in the tropical north so I was curious to follow the signs. Of course they don’t grow grapes for wine in
tropical North Queensland and it turned out that the winery makes wine from local fruits. I tried mango, passionfruit, chocolate and something called jaboticaba which I had never even heard of before. Fruit wine isn’t as bad as you might think, and I even bought a bottle of the chocolate liqueur to make a chocolately version of affogato.
All too soon it was time to return. On Sunday the rain stopped, the clouds disappeared and sun shone. However I was on the plane back to Sydney.
Now blogging at
www.beautycharmadventureonline.com - check it out!
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
I find living through a hurricane to be rather exciting...
so long as I know I am safe! Sorry about your missing the sun.