Port Douglas, Queensland

My little Wickedcamper rental draws lots of attention.

A couple of the beaches along the coastal drive from Cairns to Port Douglas.

The beautiful arrangements of sand excavated by the bubbler crabs.

Sunset over the beach at Port Douglas.

A section of the main drag of the touristy town of Port Douglas.

Editor's note: The 'm' ',' '.' keys on the laptop I am using have stopped working for some unknown reason. As a result I have to cut and paste those three characters. If I miss some please forgive me. Hopefully I can get it fixed when I return to Melbourne.

Saturday, June 25^th.

Today I flew from Melbourne to Cairns, Queensland via Tiger Airlines. The flight was a budget flight, with no TV's, no food and no leg room. However, I got there safely. The change in temperature was evident as soon as I got off the plane on the runway. It was 28 degrees and partly sunny, so I ditched my down and sweater in my luggage and took a shuttle bus into town to the offices of WickedCampers and found no one there. I knew that it was an after hours pick up, as they close at noon, but I didn't know where to get my car. So I went across the street to the Tourist Information Shop and she kindly let me use the password on my computer so I could look up the information I had. Turns out the car was outside the gates and the keys were in the exhaust and I didn't have talk to anyone or sign anything or show anyone my new licence that I had been sweating about.

I thought about where I wanted to stay and decided I'd drive up to Port Douglas and stay there, as there are a few things I want to see in the area. I used the website Wotif and booked a room at the Oaks Lagoons. So I got the car and installed my iPod and GPS programmed it for Port Douglas, but it said it couldn't calculate the route because the route data was full. Argh! So I drove around blindly, initially heading the wrong direction, until I found a sign directing me to Port Douglas. It was about a 60km drive and most of it was right along the coast driving north.

As it was getting late I decided to drive into town (about 10km away) and see what was there. I checked out the beach and walked up to a lookout over the area, then I walked around town. It is a very tourist little town with lots of restaurants and shops. I didn't feel like eating a big meal by myself so I bought some groceries and headed back to the room. Turns out the 'room' is a two bedroom apartment, complete with kitchen, livingroom, washer, dryer and dishwasher! I worked on the computer for a bit, but you only get a half hour of computer time and then they charge for it. I saw hundreds of large bats flying over the road at dusks, couldn't get photos though, maybe tomorrow. I went to bed in anticipation of an early start in the morning.