The North Queensland Holiday

God we did so much, the blog will run forever.





This was the second and last of our 2 week holidays this year and we were going to be based out of Cairns and Port Douglas, spending the first few days with our friends Neil and Helen, before they returned to the UK.

We leave Melbourne and 3.5 flying hours later we arrive in Cairns, marvelling again at the scale of this Country. You could be in North Africa from London in that time.

Cairns was a little like Blackpool on heat: endless gift shops, "authentic" dijeridoo shops everywhere, and buskers. The buskers were generally mellow, although the one who played on the street below our hotel window played the same repetoire EVERY night.

Something to do with the heat, but Cairns drivers are like Melburnians on Ketamine. I mean it was like watching kids driving those little cars in theme parks. You could see them through the heat haze driving down the road, and you waited and waited and waited. Then they saw you wanting to cross and stopped! How anyone gets anywhere is beyond me.

The hotel was good - clean, roomy, with a balcony overlooking the Esplanade, the large outdoor "infinity" public pool, and the bay. It also had its own pool, mercifully in the shade.