Blogs from Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 7

Geo: -16.4958, 145.467Port Douglas lays an hour's drive north of Cairns airport. The entrance to the town is via a long palm tree lined road with plenty of top of the range hotels and resorts dotted along it. We were staying at the Mantra Aqueous apartments in the centre of town. I am a total convert to staying in an apartment rather than a hotel as there is more room and flexibility. All we had to do was call at the supermarket which was located on the Port Douglas road leading into town and stock up on wine and stuff for breakfast. Room 17 on the first floor overlooks the pool and has a spa bath on the balcony. We had to try that with glass of wine in hand naturally! The town itself is full ... read more

Today was the day of decisions! Firstly we booked ourselves a car for the next 10 days, to take us down to Brisbane. After some serious calculations versus the Greyhound, it works out cheaper to hire a car (when there are two of you). We then headed to reef information to book ourselves a trip aboard the boat Tusa 6 on Thursday with 3 SCUBA dives on the Great Barrier Reef. Having picked up our Hyundai i20 (Vernon, he's quite a bit bigger than you are, so I won't be making the switch once I get home!) we headed up north to Port Douglas. This is a pretty little town with a 4-mile beach, unfortunately the box jelly fish mean that you have to swim in a 'stinger net' which is about 40 metres wide, not ... read more

After a few weeks of procrastinating and postponing this post, I took the time to write about my latest activities in this small town in Far North Queensland. I have already been working for "Poseidon" (http://www.poseidon-cruises.com.au/) for about 3 weeks now and so far, as expected, it's been a similar job to what I was doing before in "Calypso". Most instructors are hired to work in 3 different jobs which we get switched around. We find out what we're specifically doing every morning upon arriving in the boat: snorkeling guide, introductory dive instructor or guiding certified divers. We start every morning about 6:50 and finish the day at around 5pm. I feel more at ease now that I know the jobs better on the boat (it runs a bit different to what I was used to) ... read more

November 14th we had the last total eclipse of the sun of this year, right here in Port Douglas. The only other time I've seen a total solar eclipse was when I was in 7th grade, in 1994, in my home town. I actually it saw while I was in the school premises. Port Douglas went nuts with this phenomenon and thousands of people flew to Cairns, Palm Cove and Port Douglas to see it. There were several activities in Port Douglas, such as a night market in Anzac Park. It was held for 3 consecutive nights and it included street performers, live music (mostly local bands), stalls with different types of merchandise and souvenirs, food, etc. There were also astronomical talks the previous days leading up to the eclipse and the eclipse was narrated while ... read more

Part 3 of our adventure was with Brett's half day tour to Kuranda. Most travelers go up the sky rail and down on the train. As we had been on the Kuranda Rail Gold Class previously, we arranged for Brett to pick us up at 4.00pm at Kuranda opposite the Butterfly Sanctuary. If you love nature and challenging photography, put aside an hour or more for the sanctuary, and have one of the sanctuary guided tours which includes the breeding nursery etc. Very informative and you will see some less common moths there as well. We have visited numerous museums where there are drawers of dead bugs - this is over 2000 living butterflys, and there lies the challenge for photo buffs. Butterflies rarely fly straight, glide to a rest as do birds, and the prettier ... read more