Port Douglas

We have hit the northern most point of journey – Port Douglas. Whenever I hear about Port Douglas I think of Christopher and Pixie Skase but we found there was more to it.

The Port Douglas foreshore

We left Cairns early to hit the markets that are held by the Port Douglas foreshore each Sunday. I’ve been to a lot of markets in my time, and this one was HUGE! This photo shows a tiny part of the market – you need to imagine this scene multiplied many times over. The main stalls were selling beading/jewellery products which we enjoyed looking at. Max and Harry are both into jewellery making at the moment, so were able to pick up some good ideas.


One of the first things Max and Harry did was use pedal power to squish sugar cane into cane juice. It tasted lovely, but as we expected was a bit too sweet.



Max and Harry started talking to a couple running a stall and they asked if they would like to hold this wild pig skull …



There was a coconut face stall which Harry and I thought was neat. Apparently these items were very cool in the 1960s and the man running the stall has brought them back. This one is a pirate face…

After wandering the markets we walked into town for lunch. We found a great hotel with reasonably priced lunches and a big grassed area – just right for the boys to play on. Max and Harry started playing a game which involved Max pushing Harry over and standing on him, and then they’d get up and do it all over again. They both thought this was terrific fun! There was a little girl there about two years old who went up to Max and told him off for hurting his brother, complete with a shaking, pointed finger. She grabbed Harry’s hand and started walking around with him leaving Max bemused.

It was very funny! When Max and I talked about it a bit later I said to him that even a 2 year old knows that play was too rough so a nine year old like him should know better. “But Mum, Harry wanted me to do it, he thought it was funny! He was laughing!” – it is a bit hard to argue around that!


On the main street this caught Max and Harry’s eye:





On the way out we came across an old bomb that was in the park next to the War Memorial:



On the way home, down a very windy road, we came across this lookout. There were heaps of people visiting it as it was very beautiful:





Overall Port Douglas is more than the Skases, but apart from shopping and eating there wasn’t much more we found to do. I still think that West Australian beaches are just as lovely as the ones in the Eastern States – sometimes much more so. I’m glad I visited though!