Port Douglas

We left Cairns super early to drive up to Port Douglas to do a sail to the Low Isles.

The sail out was pretty uneventful and the weather wasn’t particularly great, it kept raining off and on.

Once we got to the island though we got to go snorkelling off the beach. We saw turtles and giant clams, so was pretty cool!

We did a tour of the island as well, which has a couple that live on it permanently that work for the BOM, and some housing for researchers.

We went back to the boat for lunch, and the water was a bit choppy so we had to go round to the other side of the island where it was more sheltered.

In the afternoon we went for another snorkle in more open water and saw even more turtles (about 3 at once) and a bunch more bigger fish. There was a couple of reef sharks around and Rachael saw one between us and the boat when we were swimming back which she wasn’t paricularly happy about (I swam over for a closer look). The water was absolutely teeming with tiny jellyfish. Some of them looked pretty cool but it was a bit worrying that some of them could have been Irukandji.

The sail back was super pleasant, and we were suprised to hear a cyclone was forming nearby.

We checked in to the resort that we were staying at - which had super nice walkways and trees. Was the first resort where part of check-in involves trying to sign you up to some sort of scammy timeshare seminar though.

The next day we were planning to go to Mossman Gorge and the Daintree but it was teeming rain when we got there, so we drove back into the centre of Port Douglas instead, where it also rained. Our sunset sail that afternoon got cancelled due to Cyclone Trevor also.

So we just pretty much stayed at the resort and read all day. The resort was not very well designed for somewhere in the tropics where it rains all the time. Everything was flooded and most the walkways between building were not covered.

On the Wednesday we checked out super early and started heading back south to get away from the cyclone.