Strange as it may seem, we hadn't seen any aborigines on our trip so far, and as it was Eloise's first visit to Australia, she had been asking me where they were all hiding. In reality, most of the true aboriginal settlements are either scattered across the middle of the country, in northern Queensland or the Northern Territories - so many visitors who arrive in Australia intending to spend weeks sunning themselves on the gold coast never get to experience any of the aboriginal culture. On the other hand, many of those who do make an effort to go on any of the numerous tourist-oriented aboriginal culture experiences aren't actually getting what they think - look under the surface and you'll quickly find that many of these so-called real experiences are actually largely staged for tourists. Go with a disreputable company, and it's not at all unlikely that those native Australians you watched cooking bush tucker over a fire in the middle of the desert while weaving or crafting elaborate dot paintings will just get back in their cars after you've gone and make their way back to their home in the city or to a large aboriginal settlement. The whole aboriginal situation in Australia is actually something of a double-edged sword. On the onehand, Australia always seems very keen to let you know that it takes aboriginal rights very seriously and has spent the best part of the last few decades handing back great chunks of the country to it's traditional owners, setting up no-go areas around spiritual sites and passing all sorts of laws involving stringing people up by their testicles for upsetting an aborigine in any way whatsoever. On the other hand, they do sometimes seem reluctant to go the whole hog when tourism might be affected. For example, the desert around Uluru (Ayers Rock) is now recognised and respected as aboriginal land and there are whole areas which are considered sacred and to which you mustn't go. However, although it is widely understood that aborigines regard Uluru as one of their most sacred sites and don't particularly like the idea of drunken western visitors climbing all over it, falling down it to their deaths or otherwise generally disrespecting it, the government is strangely reluctant to actually ban anybody from doing any of these things.

I told Eloise that, based on my previous experience of Cairns, she would be able to see plenty of aborigines along the sea front. I wasn't wrong, although I don't really think the encounter was quite what she was expecting. There is, throughout Australia, a real problem with the levels of alcohol consumption among the traditional native population, and this is never more obvious than when wandering through public places such as parks and gardens where there are plenty of shaded areas and benches to lounge around on. Certainly, the seafront at Cairns is a good place to go if you want to see an aborigine without booking a tour or going to a cultural centre (in which case, why are you even visiting Australia?), but the sight of sometimes quite frightening looking individuals hanging around on the seafront with painted faces and a tinnie (can of beer) in their hand probably isn't the first image westerners picture when they think of an aborigine (1).

On the way back from our stay in the rainforest (more of that in a moment), we had booked three nights in a place called Palm Cove to the north of Cairns. Prior to arrival, we knew very little about the town and I had simply picked it out from a brochure as a nice spot to spend some time while looking at our budget and deciding what to do with the rest of our time in Australia, and as a base from which to arrange any excursions we wanted to do while in northern Queensland. I'd wanted to stay somewhere a little different, with more of the feel of a cosy seaside village than a major destination like Cairns, and from what I'd seen in the brochure and on the web, it seemed that Palm Cove would be just right. Even the name sounded perfect - you just wouldn't expect somewhere called Palm Cove to be full of night clubs and biker bars, would you? Palm cove, in fact, is one of those little hidden delights whichhasn't yet been spoiled by everybody and their dog turning up to explore it. The beach has been voted as Australia's cleanest - no mean feat considering the size of the country - and the beachfront road is paved with granite setts, brick shaped cobbles which make it seem more like a pathway you might find meandering through a park than a roadway. Between the beach and the road, a distance of never more than a couple of metres, palm trees provide shade and atmosphere, as well as giving the village it's name. It really is quite hard to describe how different Palm Cove is - it's one of those places so special that I really am torn between keeping it to myself and telling people in the hope that it won't suddenly be descended on by everybody and lose it's charm. Unfortunately, the hotel we had booked clearly knew what a prime location they were in and was more than willing to take large chunks of money from us purely for the pleasure of getting to stay in Palm Cove. The hotel was nice enough - it was rather luxurious, in fact, and our room had it's own private patio - but it really wasn't worth the nightly room rate. Luckily, though, we had only booked the first day in advance and so were able to make a cheeky visit to the much cheaper bed and breakfast style hotel next door where we arranged to stay two more days for a fraction of what it would've cost to stay on for just one more night at the other place. And, to be honest, we didn't really miss the patio.

There isn't really a huge amount to do at Palm Cove, but it's one of those places where any more would feel like too much. When you go there, you go to relax, lie on the beach and forget your worries for a couple of days, not to spend your time windsurfing or racing about on water-skis. On the seafront, among the palm trees lining the sidewalk, upmarket restaurants can be found alongside atmospheric street cafes so small that seating comprises four plastic chairs outside in the road - and yet the service is the same whichever you choose. With a smile and a cheery "welcome to Palm Cove", you're handed a menu from which you can select anything from fish and chips to the most elaborate dishes you can imagine. There was a large fish restaurant a short walk down the road from us which seemed to be very popular, so Eloise and I plonked ourselves down on the plastic seats outside and ordered things we had never heard of before from the extensive list of available fish. This was where I discovered how much I like either Sea Bass or Red Snapper. That's the frustrating thing about fish meals in Australia - they're all so delicious that there's nothing to help me remember which is which. If anybody ever asked me to choose my favourite, I think I'd probably have to point off into the distance somewhere, say "Wow, look at that" and then run off before they looked back, just to avoid answering the question.

Seeing a car driving along the granite setts on the waterfront might give you a heart attack from the shock, it seems to happen so little - and when you get to the end of the beach road, you hit a small flagstoned roundabout and have to head back the way you came anyway. Even the shopping centre at Palm Cove seemed to be trying to remain as low key as possible. From the street, it wouldn't be at all obvious that there even was one - it was more of a casual square than a shopping centre, seemingly an afterthought rather than part of the original plans and secreted carefully away, so as not to disturb anyone, up a flight of stone steps next to one of those gift shops which sell lots of things you don't need but you really feel you want. The only pub in town was quite a walk from where we were staying, but large enough to contain several pool tables at which Eloise and I spent an evening proving to each other that neither of us could play to save our lives. Normally, in an Australian town, being able to walk for more than twenty feet without hitting a pub means that the town planners just weren't thinking straight, probably because they were drunk and drawing up the plans in the pub twenty feet from their office. In Palm Cove, this rule doesn't seem to apply - and the place is better for it, in my humble opinion.

The only fault I could find with Palm Cove wasn't even with the town itself - alas, it was here that we decided to package up nearly twenty kilos of our luggage and send it home courtesy of Australia Post rather than continuing to drag it around and run the risk of our suitcases quickly becoming too heavy to fly. We carefully put everything in a special box bought from Australia Post and rated for twenty-five Kilos, carried it between us to the Post Office in Palm Cove, filled out all the customs paperwork, paid ridiculous amounts of money to the man behind the counter, handed it over and never saw it again. Somebody, somewhere was probably wearing Eloise's dresses and decorating their walls with our souvenirs before we'd even left Australia. And here's a warning for you: if you send anything in the post from one country to another, it seems as though nobody wants to take any responsibility if it goes missing - when I finally got home and found that our stuff had vanished, all theenquiries I made led me to the conclusion that Australia thought it was the responsibility of the British Royal Mail as the destination, and the Royal Mailbelieved the problem to be down to Australia Post as the sender. Either way, nobody wanted to pay up as I hadn't thought to retain the proof of sending and it was obviously too much to ask that anybody at the Post Office had a computer system capable of actually recording what was sent, from where and on what date. What you gonna do, as they like to say in America.

(1) If the traditional peoples of Australia do have a bit of a problem with alcohol, we only really have ourselves to blame. Contrary to popular belief, alcohol was known before white people arrived on the continent, but it was strictly controlled. When the first western settlers arrived, however, they wasted no time in opening pubs on every street corner and paying the locals for their labour with alcohol - something none of them were at all used to. If you want to get somebody addicted to alcohol, that's pretty much got to be the way to do it, don't you think? For this reason, alcohol consumption by aborigines was eventually regulated and only as recently as the sixties did some areas of the country allow them to drink again. In 2007, the Australian prime minister, John Howard, essentially caused one of the biggest backlashes in living memory by announcing the results of a far-reaching government survey into the habits and ifestyles of aborigines in their own communities, and making widespread changes to the law based on his findings. Aborigines, he said, would no longer be able to drink alcohol or own pornography within the Northern Territories. He then went on to seize control of aboriginal settlements across the territory, a total reversal of previous policies regarding giving land back to it's traditional owners, and to announce that extra police would be shipped in to keep the peace and monitor computer use to ensure that nobody was downloading anything dodgy. Officially, the situation was declared a state of emergency for Australia. The reason for this sudden change in just about every pre-existing policy you can think of, was simple. According to the government study, which was commissioned under the name "little children are sacred", aboriginal parents spend most of their welfare payments on alcohol so that they don't have enough money to buy food or clothes for their children, and don't even bother looking after them or sending them to school. Apparently, in every one of the fifty settlements visited during the study, child abuse was virtually the norm and children were being taken into nearby cities to trade sex for drugs. Welfare payments will be cut until children are sent to school, the unemployed forced to perform community services in return for any welfare payments at all, and doctors will be sent into settlements to examine children under 16 for signs of abuse. Before the announcement, anyone wishing to enter aboriginal land had to apply for a permit - now, said the prime minister, anyone could enter whenever they wanted. In response to these sudden sweeping announcements, opponents immediately claimed that Mr Howard was attempting to better his chances of being re-elected at the upcoming election and asked why the government hadn't bothered doing anything about the situation for the last ten years since the settlements were handed over to private rule in the first place. The reforms, they said, were racist and where exactly were they going to find enough doctors to perform checks on 23,000 children? Whatever your opinion, Howard lost the election and was replaced by labour candidate Kevin Rudd. Two months ago, in February 2008, Rudd publicly apologised for the first time in the nations history for the way aboriginals had been treated. It would seem, as is the case with politics the world over, that governments really can't make up their minds one way or the other.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.