Cairns Lagoon

Episode 2

The first bus tour I took was to Port Douglas, some ninety minutes by coach from Cairns. The countryside on the trip was flat and boring, and when we hit the coast road it improved a bit, but none of it was in any way spectacular. I suspect that I am spoiled with the great scenery we have around every corner in New Zealand.  There are no surfing beaches right along the coast of the north, as the Great Barrier Reef shelters it.

I only saw half a dozen swimmers, along the miles and miles of coastline, and I suspect they were tourists.  These coastal waters are infested with the box jelly fish stingers, which can kill you, and salt water crocodiles, which have the delightful ability to stand just beneath the surface of the water, on their tippy toes, balefully watching you for up to an hour. There is no mention of this in any of the tourist guide books for the area, and I saw in the local Port Douglas newspaper that a couple of tourists had been hospitalised just that week with stinger injuries.  There are large bottles of vinegar on all the beaches, as “first aid”, as the vinegar can help neutralise the stings.

However, back to Port Douglas. It looks just like all of the other small tourist towns you see dotted along the coast of Eastern Australia. As I was on what was really a “whistlestop tour”

I didn’t get to see any of the lovely resort areas, which I am sure, would rival Bali.  I spent an hour or so looking around the shops, eating an icecream and waiting for the bus ride back to Cairns. However, I did enjoy the ride, until the bus driver, who was running late, dumped all of the tourists in the centre of Cairns instead of running them back to their  hotels, as he was supposed to..   He didn’t count on me!! All of the tourists got shoved off to find their own way back to their hotels, but I just sat there and demanded that he take me back to the apartments. He didn’t like it at all, but tough!!

To be continued…..