We went to Port Douglas to escape the cold of an Adelaide winter. Our escape to North Queensland was well timed as Adelaide’s winter seemed to want to cling on.

It had also been a very hectic few months. We had been consumed by family matters. There were no major crises but just a series of bumps. We hoped Port Douglas would be the remedy and weren’t disappointed. It was hard not to immediately be aware of North Queensland’s relaxed lifestyle. All pretension is lost. It’s so refreshing compared to the angst of city life. I have a running theory that the further you are from the centre of the city the more relaxed lif is. 

I hadn’t been to Port Douglas since 1987, which was the year the infamous Christopher Skase opened The Mirage. On that occasion, I had a spare day on a work trip in Cairns and, with a work colleague, drove up. My chief recollection was having a Mocka Pie. You can still get them, but in 2023 Port Douglas is a thriving tourist town where Mocka’s  Pie Shop is a modern bakery just off Macrossan Street.

There are no dress codes, except that restaurants and bars seem to demand men wear a shirt!

We arrived in the evening and so didn’t take in the sites of the coast drive from Cairns airport to Port Douglas. It’s a drive of about 55 km and an hour’s duration.

When we planned this trip in December 2022, we were Northern Queensland novices. We had a basic understanding that the choices were Cairns, Palm Cove or Port Douglas.  We decided against basing ourselves in Cairns, and so I asked a friend about Port Douglas or Palm Cove.

After a detailed online search of the 2, we decided on Port Douglas as it seemed it had more going on than Palm Cove.  In 2023 as distinct from my 1987 visit, Port Douglas offers a vast choice of accommodation. There are apartments, hotels, hostels, Airbnbs, and motels everywhere, offering choice in style and price.  Food choices are also extensive with a huge variety of restaurants, pubs, cafes and takeaways. Whether it’s sushi, Thai, Mexican, traditional fish and chips, seafood, Italian, gourmet, bistro, pub food, a sandwich, pastry or a great steak it’s all there. The coffee and breakfasts are excellent. The town is also well serviced by an excellent butcher and large supermarket. If it’s a bottle of wine you want, then there are plenty of places to meet that need and there are ice cream and smoothies as well.

Once we made our decision on location, we then had to decide on where to stay in Port Douglas. We had no idea about accommodation beyond wanting an apartment, and because we were not paying for overseas airfares and were using points (although it didn’t quite work out that way) we wanted a luxury option.  We were also aware that we needed to book a considerable period ahead. After a search of the options, we decided on Coconut Grove Apartments, which is at the Four Mile Beach end of Macrossan Street, Port Douglas’s main street.

Our apartment was spacious with a full kitchen, sitting room, large TV, bedroom, huge walk-in dressing room,  large bathroom and separate laundry. There was also a balcony with a small sitting area table and outdoor kitchen – as they say in Month Python ‘Luxury’!  It had everything we could want including a shared pool and spa which we enjoyed more than once. It also had a car park under the building which we didn’t use. Sure, it was pricey, but definitely worth it.  You get what you pay for, and when we had a major hitch with our return travel, they could not have been more helpful. Infact, at every level, support from reception was excellent.

Cafe Dulce, at street level in the apartment complex, was our first stop. Good coffee accompanied by the breakfast of champions – Vegemite on toast! From there, it was a leisurely stroll the length of Macrossan Street to the Sunday Market, which is held in Anzac Park at the water’s edge.  It’s a big market full of the usual market fare. I bought a pineapple, which I discovered was the juiciest I’d had for many a year.

It was also clear that I needed a hat, as my cap, bought in Lecce a few years earlier, would not do the job.  As every second shop seemed to sell hats, I gathered I wasn’t the only person who reached that conclusion.

Macrossan Street is a mix of retail and hospitality. The retail mix was primarily clothing. The clothing was directed towards the warm weather and beach wear which wasn’t a surprise, as most visitors are like us, coming north from the cold weather. There are also plenty of real estate agents who offer tempting opportunities to convert a holiday into a lifestyle change.

More than once, we talked with someone who said they came for a month or two and never left. On one of our strolls, we visited the courthouse museum and chatted with a local volunteer who, like everyone, was from somewhere else. This isn’t surprising as Pt Douglas which has a long history had shrunk to about a hundred residents in the late 1980s before the advent of the Mirage Resort and a tourist boom. These days, it’s a few thousand permanent residents plus visitors like ourselves.

Low Isles lighthouse light – Courthouse Museum

As the week progressed, it was easy to understand why people visited and decided to stay. Without the pull of our family in Adelaide, I think we could easily be in that group, particularly as my favourite person struggles with the cold.

I took a casual membership at the gym and visited a number of times during our stay. The gym is bigger gym than the one I use in Adelaide but has the same relaxed vibe. No valuables locker, just a rack to put your bag on. There are plenty of machines and a good selection of weights. After each visit, I left relaxed and exhausted and headed straight for the pool at our accommodation. A far cry from the last few months in Adelaide, where the cold had meant a brisk walk home and a warm shower.

I’d been warned to book restaurants before we left, as they quickly filled. It was good advice. We ate out on most nights, as I wanted a week away from cooking duties. The restaurants are busy by 6.30pm, and by 7.45pm, they are starting to empty out. Dinner services all seem to run out at around 8.30 pm.

Our first night was at La Cucina, a very Italian restaurant. Good Italian fare, and it set the scene for the meals we had.

During the week, we also had a great steak at IronBar, as well as the Watergate and two visits to Wrassle and Roe. All the restaurants were ones we’d happily go back to, as Wrassle and Roe proved. On one of the nights, we used the BBQ on our balcony and had a steak from the local butcher. It was delicious and super relaxing with a glass or two of Petaluma Chardonnay and a Gibson GSM.  Sitting at an outdoor table on our balcony was a luxury.  During our stay, we spent plenty of hours there.

We also discovered The Sunroom Lounge, a Spanish-influenced wine and tapas bar. It has an extensive wine list that included some of our favourites from Bremerton in South Australia’s Langhorne Creek wine region. We visited a couple of times. It’s a gem and quite unexpected in a seaside town.

We also made Cafe Fresq a breakfast go to. It was a recommendation from Coconut Grove. My favourite person has some dietary challenges, and while all the places we ate were very happy to accommodate, Cafe Fresq was particularly so. Wherever we went, including on the couple of tours we took, the willingness to accommodate dietary issues was at a level we’d not experienced anywhere before.

Throughout our time in Brisbane and Port Douglas, we were constantly delighted by the quality of the service. It was excellent and a far cry from our recent experience in Perth, where the service is generally pretty average, and our home city of Adelaide, which is also patchy. A chat with one of the crew on our trip to the Barrier Reef suggested it was a response to the impact of COVID, which had decimated the tourist industry. Everyone is trying hard to impress to ensure they remain busy.

Although tourism is getting back to normal levels, the mix is very much Australian rather than the 50/50 split between Aussies and Internationals of the past. Staff were always happy to chat and were genuinely interested in their customers. Whether it was in a retail store buying clothes, my hat, or at meals, they were great. It was to our benefit, and we appreciated it. I also loved the constant reference to us as “Darl”; it was one of my mother’s favourite terms of endearment.

We had dispensed with the idea of a hire car. I cancelled the one we booked and reallocated those funds to tours of the Daintree and Barrier Reef. Not having a car fitted our goal of a relaxing trip with plenty of downtime, whether in our room, reading on the balcony, going to the gym or walking.  Four Mile Beach was just a hundred metres from where we were staying, as was a coastal walk that winds up through the forest that adjoins the coast and ends at Anzac Park. It’s a good walk with great coastal views. The added bonus was that we could survey other accommodation options as we completed the walk. I have since spent a few hours considering  what was on offer for our next visit.

St Mary’s by the Sea is the delightful non-denominational church, formally a Catholic Church, which, at the time of our visit, was set up for a wedding later in the day.

We walked out along the jetty at the restored Sugar Wharf, used for events, and noticed the warning that a crocodile had been seen in the area last week. That hadn’t put all the swimmers off – I was immediately drawn to the cartoon comment ‘Good morning breakfast’  that Sylvester used to greet Tweety Bird with.

 

The marina is apparently Queensland’s most northern marina. It has an impressive array of private and tour yachts and private craft as well as a shopping precinct, cafes, bars and tour operators.

Sadly, our planned departure was impacted by a tragic crash that closed the road to the airport. It meant our travel plans changed and a delay in getting home by 24 hours. We were able to rearrange flights and accommodation at not insignificant cost; however, compared to the loss suffered by the family of the unfortunate motorcyclist and driver of the other vehicle, our inconvenience is irrelevant.

We had mixed feelings about our extra day in this lovely holiday spot. We checked into our new accommodation, a little shaken. It was just so sad that someone’s death had given us an extra day away.

That said, it was a delightful week away. It is a great holiday spot and one that it’s easy to understand why people keep returning to. I know we will.