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.