Due to a slight fiasco with a beached dive boat, we only made it as far as Townsville for an overnight stop. The next day we continued on up the coast to our northern most destination of Port Douglas. Here we had a relaxing two nights chilling out by the pool, checking out the many cafes, bars and boutiques on the very cute main street, and escaping the humidity with the in-room air conditioning. The relaxed vibe was however dampened slightly by the sand flies that covered me with red blotches and the crocodiles and stinging jelly fish that make swimming the sea a perilous experience.
Our last two nights in Queensland were spent in the tourist Mecca of Cairns. Most people use Cairns as a base for short snorkelling or diving trips on the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately unless you go on a (expensive) multi-day live-aboard to the outer reef, the stuff that can be reached from Cairns is reputedly rather shit. With this in mind, we spent the day in Cairn's jellyfish free, artificial saltwater lagoon.
Finally we ditched the car and flew to Darwin, our first experience of the Northern Territory. After barely recovering from its Japanese bombardment in WWII, Darwin was levelled by Cyclone Tracy in 1974 – as a result the architecture is less than inspiring. We decided to check out the newly developed dock area scheduled to be opened in 2008. Unfortunately this had not yet been finished so we had to view the impressive looking multi-million dollar development of flats, hotels and swimming lagoon from behind the fences.
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