Day 72 Townsville to Port Douglas

Well I take back to a degree what I said yesterday about there being nothing to see. Todays drive from Townsville to Port Douglas did produce some interesting scenery even though the journey took much longer than we expected. It was around 400 km which we reckoned would take about 5 hrs based on previous drives and the fact than the roads are single carriageway with a max speed of 100kph. What we hadn't reckoned on was the number of road works on the journey. I gave up the count when we had got well into double figures but it was probably around the 30 mark, absolutely hopeless. Around mid morning we passed through the area that had been hit by the Cyclone Yasi, a category 5 cyclone and the worst one to hit the area for a very long time. The trees along the side of the road for miles had the a bit of a look of a bush fire as not only were they broken, and uprooted but the winds had completely removed the top canopy of leaves and branches. There were a lot of houses that still had tarpaulins over their roofs and some that had been virtually raised to the ground, but they were in the minority. We stopped at a little cove for lunch and the café owner said he was still waiting for the insurance assessor to arrive some five weeks after the event. It is also very quiet up here as loads of people have cancelled their trips but apart from a little garden damage there was no damage here in Port Douglas. Have really struck lucky with our accommodation again as we have been upgraded again from a one bedroomed mountain view apartment to a three bedroomed ground floor with our own private terrace and garden. It's so nice to be able to spread ourselves again. As we were really sticky from driving we went straight to the pool for a leisurely swim in warm water. This place is really quiet and we had the whole area to ourselves. I've actually only seen evidence of a handful of people staying here, hence our upgrade I guess. That over it was a quick shower and into town t buy some groceries, something for dinner and of course obligatory bottle of wine and pre dinner drinks. The kitchen here is so nice it makes you want to cook and with the temperature still in the high 20's once the sun goes down it's wonderful to eat outside in our secluded garden. We bought some Morten Bay Bugs in Coles to try as a starter, they look pretty weird but taste like a cross between a crayfish and a prawn with a similar meat texture to that of lobster. They were really scrummy so will get again before we leave Oz. Nice lazy evening of food and wine and catching up on the blog, life is wonderful……..