All set on our short journey from Cairns to Gold Coast, or so we thought!! Cindy, our travel agent had gone for the local Gold Coast airport, closer to our destination by 30 minutes you see! We set off early and arrived in good time, had a bit of a chuckle at bag drop about the people late for their Melbourne flight! We reached the desk and the woman tells us the flight has gone - cue shocked faces, for some reason I had the arrival vs the departure time in my...

Our last day in Port Douglas kicked off with an early morning walk along four mile beach. Quite bizarre to see a beach rush hour with everybody out walking and exercising in the cooler morning air. After breakfast we have settled by the pool, an hour in the sunshine is enough so we are hiding in the shade having a mellow day. We move to the Gold Coast, a final stop over before a one night stay in Sydney & the long flight home. Port Douglas is a town in tw...

Up early for a day of sailing & snorkelling on the barrier reef. Our boat had around 30 people on it, not too crowded which was lovely. It took 1.5 hours to get to our first stop on Opal Reef where we would spend the day snorkelling at three sites. The sea was very bumpy on the way out with lots of people unwell. The boat has a small crew mostly marine biologists, en route we were given a great overview on the corals & the fish we would see. Our guid...

We ventured back towards Cairns today to travel through the rainforest to Kuranda. The rainforest canopy is vast and stunning, all the better seen through the glass bottom of our cable car - not for the faint hearted! Kuranda is surrounded by world heritage rainforest 1000m above Cairns, the traditional home of the Djabugay people. The first Europeans settled here in 1885, later in the 60's the lifestyle prompted a hippy invasion (still very much in evidence)!...

Our down time continues with lazy days and mellow evenings. Port Douglas is deceptively large, a long high street with heaps of coffee shops and trendy boutiques, quite expensive with lots of visitors and older locals - reminds me of the movie 'Batteries not Included'. We wandered down to the harbour where we found waterside restaurants - too many to fit in before we go home. Port Douglas is very much like the Caribbean, maybe a bit more fancy. We ate at On t...