Breakfast barney!

As ever, life always throws in a little bit of rain on your sunny days to restore some balance to things.

We've had an exceptional four days in Port Douglas and created some memories that will not leave both of us for a long, long time. Everything has been pretty much perfect, until this morning.

The shuttle bus to Cairns airport isn't until 4.30pm, so we have a lazy morning and head for brekkie just after 10ish. We sit down, order some chorizo on bread, and wait.

Then we wait some more. It's not that busy and everyone seems to have been served apart from us. So we wait a little bit more and then try to get the attention of the staff. No joy. They're busy doing something apart from cooking our breakfast. I reckon we've been here about 40 minutes and since people who arrived only 5 minutes ago are getting served and we can't get any attention, we decide to go and pay for the coffees and then leave.

We approach the counter and tell the waiter who took our order that we are going, and he looks, well, who knows what the expression was, just looked like he didn't care or didn't understand, so we still offer to pay for the coffees. Then he goes to the kitchen, without telling us what is going on, and then hell begins to open.

It's an open kitchen so we can see the chef and she starts ranting, the waiter comes back to us with no information so I'm suggesting we just go. Then the chef comes out with a face like fizz.
'Im cooking your food now, you cannot leave. It's being done right now.'
'We've been here 40 minutes and everyone else is being served before us. So we're going to pay for the coffee and leave.', I suggest.

'You have not been here more than 15 minutes, here is the ticket', she produces the ticket and waves it at us. 'I'm cooking it now, it'll be one minute and I will serve you personally.', she barks.

The prospect of sitting down with our tails between our legs and getting served by this pram-faced harridan is about as appealing as taking a dip in a bath full of funnel-web spiders, and now she has also accussed us of being liars. Mandy is still trying to pay for the coffee when the chef comes back out with two plates, and we say we are leaving anyway.

'This is good food', she cries. 'It is very specific.'

It is sausage and toast!!!

She then starts to get abusive, at which point Mandy walks off to avoid bloodshed, and I exchange a few pleasantries with the psycho chef before following suit.

'You are stealing my wages. I don't know where you are coming from.', she yells after us.

'I know where we're not coming back to.', I reply.

And so for the first time ever, we walk off without paying for anything, and she's still yelling at us when we're at the other end of the street. Neighbouring cafes are bemused by the whole thing, and who knows what the remaining customers are thinking.

It takes a good hour or so to fully calm down from something that could have been avoided with a simple 'We're sorry'; 'the kitchen is busy'; 'my dog died today'; 'the staff are incompetent and I am possessed by satan and his hairy minions'; standard type of excuse. Instead it escalates into something like the 'Dirty Fork' sketch from Monty Python.

See here for Details: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk4_Bt0yNgw

Degustacion Delights

Port Douglas has lots and lots of restaurants, bistros and bars catering to all tastes and budgets, and weve not had a bad meal in any of them. But there are a couple of restaurants which look like the kind of place I never thought I'd find myself in. There is the thought of pretentious nouvelle cuisine and the thought of the expense as well, and when you look at a menu that has words like 'deconstructed salad' on it the Scottish bulls**t alarm goes off.

But it's been a week of new experiences so it's time to dive in again. We go to Harrison's which has a six course degustacion menu with wine for each course, and no deconstruction in site. This proves to be a very, very good idea, and to satisfy the stingey gene it actually works out none too pricey especially considering the wine and the quality of the food.

I won't try and recount each individual dish or the wine that went with it, or pretend to be a food expert, but I know now that not all 'posh' food is pretentious food.

Gondwana Land

The far north of Queensland is the only place in the world where two world heritage sites join onto each other. We've already visited the Great Barrier Reef, and today it's a visit to the Daintree Rainforest.

We could drive there ourselves but we opt to take Tony's Tours, which will be easier and more informative. The tours also have a maximum of 8 people on them, so no crowds.

We're picked up at early o'clock and driven by Dave to the Mossman Gorge. It's raining and everyone takes umbrellas, apart from us. A) It's not that wet under the canopy and B) We're Scottish, it's not that wet.

After a short walk we are driven to the Daintree River where we board a boat for a cruise down this haunt of the estuarine crocodile.

3 metre female

A well camouflaged youngster

Green tree snake

As you can see, everything that lives here is well-camouflaged and perfectly adapted to this ancient environment. And, even though there are dozens of crocs in the vicinity, we only spot two or three. Which is good because it means they are avoiding humans, which works well for both species, but especially for them.

On the way to our next stop we hit a minor traffic jam caused by cars stopping to catch sight of something in the forest. Just at the edge of the forest a big black shape is bustling about. It raises its neck and reveals itself as a Cassowary, as close to a living dinosaur as you'll ever see on land. It's a realtive of the emu about six feet tall, black body, vivd blue neck and a large horny plate on its head. Although we can't see it, it also has a wicked 5 inch long middle claw which it uses to disembowel things it doesn't like. Which is why we don't leave the car for a closer look, unlike some other idiots.

Something like this (not my photo)

This is quite an amazing encounter considering the rarity of these birds, the lack of visibility in this location and the scale of the forest. This exaggerates the whole jurassic park feel.

The next stop is 'morning tea' at Cape Tribulation, with locally produced Daintree tea and coffee on offer.

Black Butcher Bird

We have lunch in the rainforest and the antipodeans on the trip convince an American girl to try Vegemite, with predictable results.

Strangler Vine

Inside the Strangler Vine

We take several more short walks with Dave bestowing a mix of genuine info and his own brand of practical jokery. The best example being when he reaches into a hole in the rainforest floor and threatens to draw out a local tarantula, which freaks out several people.

We finish off the day by returning back to Port Douglas and Dave pulls over to show us the local fruit bat population. Who knows how we missed them before cos there are only about 50,000 of them pretty much in the middle of town.

Eco Un-correct

Australia shares many things with the rest of the world; a love of beer; freedom with a sense of civic duty; and generic human hopes and fears. It also has a strong environmental movement, fuelled by its incredible natural gifts, but also by dwindling resources. Yesterday's visit to the reef was an exercise in carefully managing the impact of tourism without ruining the experience, educational, enjoyable and eco-friendly.

Tonight's experience though is a big chunk of pure Australiana, the Cane Toad Race. The Cane Toad, like many naive efforts at bio-engineering, was introduced to Australia to control the cane beetle. This was arguably successful.

Of course no-one thought about how to control the cane toad. It has no natural predators in Australia, and is inedible anyway due to being highly toxic, even it's tadpoles are poisonous.

It has therefore become utterly loathed, especially in Queensland where they grow a lot of sugar cane. But I'll let Bruce explain a bit more.

Thus we spend the next hour witnessing the politically incorrect but utterly hilarious spectacle. Highlighted by Mandy's selection as a 'jockey' of the aptly named 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie'.

The Great Barrier Reef

There are some things you really want to do when you're young, but never actually think you'll get to do it. Visiting the great barrier reef was one of those things for me. But here I am, armed with an underwater camera, a snorkel and some flippers, sitting on a yacht heading out to the unknown.

There's a certain amount of trepidation on my part as I've never snorkelled before and the part of the reef we are going to is the same place that Steve Irwin met his fate. Added to this, Mandy is still recovering from major dental surgery, so she probably won't be able to give me the benefit of her experience.

We're heading out to the Low Isles about 15km off the coast of Port Douglas, a tiny coral island on the inner part of the reef.

Despite the obvious attractions, the added benefit of this is that we can just launch ourselves off the island into shallow water, instead of anchoring in deep water and heading out to the reef. Mandy's previous experience with a whale shark confirms this as a good idea. It also means that if the snorkel isn't workable for her, she can laze about the island whilst I practice some controlled drowning.

After a short buzz about in a glass bottomed boat, we have some lunch and then don the gear.
There's just no 'cool' way of entering the water with flippers on. After a few brief panicky moments as my brain adjusts to realising that though my mouth is underwater I can still breathe, we're on our way.


After about half an hour or so Mandy is quite tired, which is a good effort since she can't use a snorkel, so she heads back to the island and I'm left on my own to explore. The photos from my camera can't do it any justice at all, so you'll have to take my word that it's everything you expect it to be and more besides. Colourful fish and coral, giant clams, but best of all is when I look up and floating only a couple of feet away from me is this fella...

A green sea turtle. There is another diver about two feet away from him but facing in totally the wrong direction. He swims alongside for a minute at most then disappears off, and I realise that I'm laughing my head off through my snorkel.

After a little bit more 'controlled' floating I head back to the island, chuffed to bits with the whole experience.
The rest of the day is chilling out and really just letting it all sink in.






Oh, but we have a different wildlife experience to look forward to tonight....

Sunset with the Crocs

It's time to take a decent look at Port Douglas, but only after brekkie and another swim in the hotel pool.


After some mojito enhanced decision making we've booked a day out at the great barrier reef tomorrow, which leaves us with some time to wander down to Four Mile Beach, then take a sunset cruise on the Lady Douglas.


The cruise is an hour or so up the Dickson Inlet through the mangrove forests and the territory of the great Australian estuarine crocodile. Despite everything you may have heard, they're not swarming everywhere just waiting to eat human flesh, they are typically solitary and secretive creatures, as their survival for 200 million years attests to.

The captain of the Lady Douglas delivers a lot of useful information about the animal and it's environment, richly laced with an ironic wit.

'Do Not Anchor'

Lazy Sunday in Queensland

After a swim in the hotel's salt-water lagoon pool, our first port of call is a cold one in the down to earth Central Hotel, a classic Aussie pub, cold beer, pokies, and plenty of room to eat and watch the footie. We take time to discuss what we want to do for the next couple of days. But for today it's time to relax and soak up the heat and a few schooners as well.

Eventually we end up in the Courthouse Hotel, sitting outside listening to a lively band and watching the antics of the recently victorious local footie team as they celebrate with a pub crawl, dressed in their mothers' finest sunday dresses. We get the impression that Port Douglas is a mix of well-heeled tourists with a solid heart of 'colourful' locals.


After some food we pop in to the Iron Bar to witness 'Cane Toad Racing', unfortunately we're too late for the full spectacle, but we do get a look at the contestants.

This is my first close-up look at the most hated creature in Australia, and it's hard to deny that they are ugly. But we'll be back in a couple of days to witness this slice of Australiana in it's full glory.

Sydney to Port Douglas

Another early start sees us leaving the house at 5.30am to get the shuttle to Sydney for the 8.15 flight to Cairns. We've scored a decent deal for 4 nights in Port Douglas and we're really looking forward to it, despite the usual drudgery involved with airports and other people in general.

Port Douglas is about 60km north of Cairns, which is in itself about 2500km north of Sydney, towards the far northern tip of the east coast. To put a bit of perspective on things that's like going from Edinburgh to Moscow without leaving the country. Although we are going from New South Wales to far north Queensland so there may be some who would disagree about that last bit. As I'm doing the whole perspective thingy (and I've just found a funky online distance calculator), our arrival in Port Douglas not only puts us firmly in the tropic of capricorn but a mere 500 miles from Papua New Guinea.


I'm sure that all of this is fascinating enough in itself but the real reason we are here is that Port Douglas is wedged between two world heritage sites, namely the Daintree Rainforest and that other natural wonder the Great Barrier Reef. Which promises a whole host of opportunities for new experiences and winter temperatures of 30 degrees, backed up with sea temperatures of about 24 degrees. Not too shabby.

We rock up to the hotel in the early afternoon, sort ourselves out and then head out to orientate ourselves via the many lively hostelries in the town.