About one hour north of Cairns lies a beautiful beach town called Port Douglas. The best aspect of The Port is the fact that there is no development directly on the shoreline. The four-mile stretch of sand is fringed in palms and casuarinas, is pancake flat which makes it ideal for walking the distance, and firm which means its bike-friendly. The resorts that lie beyond the border of woodland are no more than three stories and the one road into town is not littered with tacky commercial activity, but lined in stately coconut palms. Everything about the place seems understated and moderately upscale. There happen to be 2 caravan parks along the main road and both are chock-a-block from June through September. Neither is particularly impressive in appearance but the location only a five minute walk from the beach and less than a mile into the restaurant/shopping precinct, mean they can charge what they like for the ideal spot. We weren’t able to secure a site until someone had an emergency that sent them packing. So we started out camping about 5 miles outside of town in a nice Big4 caravan park in a bucolic setting. There were a two positive aspects to being a little out of town. The setting was a garden of tropical vegetation and the birdlife amazing. A dawn chorus woke us every morning and it was quite spectacular in volume and variety. There was also a terrific walk/ride down the narrow rural road which was a bit of a highway for the exercise fiends each morning. Our neighbors were a couple from Geelong whom we made a habit of meeting for cocktail hour just about every evening.

The weather along the coast here is warm – mid 20s (high 70sF) – but humid, unseasonably so, at 75-80%.  Tolerable if you don’t budge. The ocean temp now is 23…pretty perfect…and cool enough that stingers aren’t generally present at this time of year. Crocs are still around but we saw people swimming all the time so apparently they aren’t a real issue here. There are days when there is nary a breeze and zero surf. But every time we thought to plan a snorkeling trip, the clouds would return and wind would pick up.