Port Douglas: Reef and rainforest

[AisleSeat]

Off to Port Douglas for some diving on the GBR, pool lounging and maybe catch a sighting of a cassowary up in the Daintree.

The return flight will see Mrs AS tick over to QF Silver. The end of this month is her anniversary and she'll be applying for parental status hold too.

I'm anticipating some issues as we'll apply before March ends, but it seems points and SC accrued on JQ take a while to come through, so she may not be PS in the system when we apply.


Anyway, off we go.

Woke up early this morning to find out our flight was delayed, so back to bed for a little while longer, which was fine by all of us.

We use Jetaway parking at MEL. They're well priced, don't penalise for late returns, always friendly and seem to know every flight schedule.

Check-in at the JQ counter was smooth, although they could have done with one more counter open.

We got to our gate, and then over the PA comes this message:

"The plane needs a tyre change".

A bit disappointing there wasn't a window to watch that happen; I'd like to have seen it.

Anyone else seen a plane get it's tyre changed?

The flight to Cairns was barely half full which was nice. My travel mistake was not realising it was technically an international flight (onwards to Osaka), so disembarking at Cairns meant we had to go through immigration. *Insert joke about QLD being a foreign country here*

 

[AisleSeat]

Yesterday was dive day out on the GBR. I picked Silversonic as I knew about them from way back when I worked in Cairns.



A full day out on the boat which included all food and drink, 3 dives and marine park fee was $325.

It was cloudy all day with a bit of rain, so visibility was maybe 15m. Apparently no coral bleaching has been recorded up this end this year which is great to hear.



This is Agincourt reef. The clouds meant no great pics of the usually blue water. You can just make it out.

Nice dives with the usual reef fishes. Some nice moments were seeing a spotted ray, QLD grouper, giant clam and an anemone fish family.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

A full day out on the boat which included all food and drink, 3 dives .

The Silver Sonic is a good choice IMO if you want to view things from in the water. As it is quick there is less time get our and back and you get 3 locations rather than only 2.

Not having a swim platform at any of their locations is for me is a plus rather than a negative.

 

[Cool Cat Phil]

Not having a swim platform at any of their locations is for me is a plus rather than a negative.

Having done 3 seperate Diving Excursions at the Great Barrier Reef, those operators without the frills of reef Platforms and glass bottom boats, are certainly more enjoyable reef experiences.
This is down to two simple observations, these operators take you to better locations with better fish and coral life and far less people onboard the cruise, that makes for a better day.

 

[Limewood]

Yes its a great experience and even better on a sunny day, not in the current wet season, PD its around 1 hour from our front door

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Having done 3 seperate Diving Excursions at the Great Barrier Reef, those operators without the frills of reef Platforms and glass bottom boats, are certainly more enjoyable reef experiences.
This is down to two simple observations, these operators take you to better locations with better fish and coral life and far less people onboard the cruise, that makes for a better day.

Based upon my experience of visiting the reef with various operators from at various location from Cape Tribulation on down to Mission Beach, over 3 decades of visits, I fully agree.

Though one nice aspect of a platform once were the vary large and tame gropers that you could swim with as they came in every day due to being fed.

 

[AisleSeat]

The Silver Sonic is a good choice IMO if you want to view things from in the water. As it is quick there is less time get our and back and you get 3 locations rather than only 2.

Not having a swim platform at any of their locations is for me is a plus rather than a negative.

Having done 3 seperate Diving Excursions at the Great Barrier Reef, those operators without the frills of reef Platforms and glass bottom boats, are certainly more enjoyable reef experiences.
This is down to two simple observations, these operators take you to better locations with better fish and coral life and far less people onboard the cruise, that makes for a better day.

Yep. I avoided the actual Quicksilver boat for this reason.

Luckily on my boat it was mostly snorkelers and intro divers, so my dive group of 7 had the sites pretty much to ourselves.

 

[AisleSeat]

Day 3.

Today's plan was to head up to the Daintree, and maybe Cape Tribulation.

Quite a bit of rain in the morning, but we got going and it dried up enough to enjoy a lot of the drive.

Heading north out of Port Douglas reminded me a lot of driving through Costa Rica or Fiji.



First stop was the ferry across the Daintree River, a cable driven car ferry that took a few minutes to cross. $27 return trip.




Next stop was the Daintree Discovery Centre which has a walkway up in the trees, and a few other walkways that take you through parts of the forest. An audio guide is provided.



A view from the top of the tower.


There are some proximity sensored animatronic dinosaurs as well.



Next stop was lunch, so we pulled into the Cow Bay hotel. Nothing special about it really, just a proper country pub. The food was OK. We were early, so the place was empty.



I walked in and the barlady asked what I wanted. I asked for juice, turned to my soon-to-be-3 daughter and asked her what she wanted. She look at the barlady and said....

"Do you have beer?"

I was mortified but impressed with her ability to recognise that this was a place that sold beer. The barlady smirked and said "Hmmm, I wonder where she got that from." Oops.

Next stop was ice cream, just up the road from the pub at the Daintree Ice Cream Co. All their ice cream is made from local in-season fruit.

Their taster cup ($7.50) had coconut, passionfruit, black sepote and wattleseed. Delicious!



We skipped Cape Tribulation and headed home as the kids had hit their car journey limit. A shame because my parents decided to go before coming back and they saw a cassowary there!

 

[Limewood]

Game going up there in this big wet.

 

[AisleSeat]

Game going up there in this big wet.

Which brings me to today's post.....

 

[AisleSeat]

Day 4.

Today it hasn't stopped raining since 8am. Not one let up.

We headed into town just to get out the house and go for coffee, thinking the rain might let up just a bit. Nope.

We figured we might as well stay in town for lunch and then head home. Nothing else to be done.

Exiting the covered carpark was like crossing a river ford, water up to the door. Driving back to our house, I could see the Sheraton golf course was well on its way to being completely flooded.

Here's a view from the back of our house onto a park.



Oh well, this is the risk of coming in the wet season!

I think I'll open a bottle of bubbly.

 

[Denali]

It know you're not asking but if you not dived yet, Lady Elliot Is is a good spot once bub is here and you get away again. Basic accom but nice place to visit in August.

 

[AisleSeat]

Day 5.

The sun came out and all the water had disappeared. I swear you'd never know yesterday happened if you'd rolled into town today. Except for the fact locals were saying it was the worst they'd seen in 20 years, and that the road to Cairns was shut because of landslides.

Anyway, we headed out to the beach for a walk. Seems some locals bring their deckchairs down.





We wanted to hire a river pontoon boat, but the owners couldn't even get to town because their road was out because of fallen trees.

We wandered and ended up at Hemingway's Brewery.



The beers are good. The styles are pretty much spot on and they do takeaway plastic 740ml bottles ($7.90, bargain). I was impressed they prefilled the bottles with CO2 before filling.

A couple of ziplock bags and these bottles are good in the suitcase back to Melbourne.

So we were winding down on our last day in FNQ, expecting an easy rest of the day, packing, and an early night.....when all hell broke loose.

Our 6 month old son started projectile vomiting. Mrs AS got covered, and after a full clothes change for her and him, got covered again in a second salvo.

We called it quits and headed back to our house.

Then.....

While on the drive home our son filled his nappy so much that I swear we had just driven past a pig farm. Our daughter then emptied her bladder into her car seat. Total chaos.

Its a good thing we had wine back at the house.

 

[AisleSeat]

Day 6.

We left for Cairns before dawn, anticipating delays because of landslides on Captain Cook Highway and flooding in Cairns. It took just over 1.5 hours to get the airport.

Now I was expecting to find at least one trolley at the car rental return carpark. Nope.

I went searching for one in T2 arrivals, that being the nearest building. There was a bunch in the rack, but either the machine wasn't working, or it charged me and didn't give me a trolley. Ugh. Not even a fault number to call.

The JQ check-in was heaving, as some counter staff hadn't been able to make it into work because of flooding. We needed to take our pram and car seat to the service desk to get tagged, and, through what I can only suggest is karma, JQ staff promptly tagged all of our bags, meaning we skipped the massive check-in/bag drop queue.

Oh, and I completely forgot to take off my belt when going through security. My belt buckle is solid metal and absolutely should've set the detector off. Nope.

Made it back to MEL in one piece. The JQ flight attendants were great, even taking the kids off our hands for 5 minutes so we could have a breather.

It wasn't quite the relaxing holiday we were expecting, but some fun times and some good travel tips picked up.