Matey's musings: Port Douglas through a new lens

When our friend Dan invited us to housesit his resort apartment in 'Port' we gladly accepted. In the hottest and most draining wet season we have yet encountered the relief his air-conditioned pad provided from the barrage of heat was welcome indeed. Knowing we could return to a cool apartment, drained and drenched, after brief forays out enabled us bravely to face the sauna outside. We also had some relief from the heat while visiting Melbourne, and without these respites it’s hard to imagine having survived this last wilting wet season entirely on the boat. Happy hours were spent in Port meeting locals and cooling off. Thanks Dan! ☺

The very dry ‘wet’ is not over yet and the Matey shouldn’t tempt fate by speaking too soon, but we have not yet needed to venture up a mangrove creek to befriend crocs and sandflies while escaping an approaching cyclone. With very little cloud cover and even less rain, the water also overheated and, like us, the coral found the ambient temperature to be intolerable and have gone into preservation mode by expelling their colourful algae. We can only hope this bleaching event will be brief enough for them to survive and for the colour to return, before it becomes permanent and fatal. How sad it is to see once colourful, lively ecosystems reduced to a ghostly white. If only, like us, they could have escaped to a generous friend’s cooler abode. (As we all know the reason for this heat and coral damage is human-induced climate change, but the Matey shall spare you her rant about that, for now).

Spending time in Port Douglas allowed us to explore some of the surrounding landscape and pay homage to a much loved local waterfall at Spring Creek, as well as cooling off in fast-flowing local rainforest streams. A recent walk with the Cairns Bushwalking Club enabled us to make some new friends and discover the Mowbray Falls, which we accessed from private property, but it can also be accessed from above via the Bump Track. This was a great day walk involving much rock-hopping and even a mandatory swim across a gorge with sides steep enough to prevent climbing around. The swim required floating backpacks and we discovered large vacuum sealed bags with an air pocket inside (along with packpacks) were quite effective in keeping the contents dry. One well-organised walker had brought an inflatable dinghy/lie-low for the purpose.