The Dawn Princess arrived and anchored in Port Douglas’ outer harbour early on Friday morning. As with all of the east coast ports, we find that our coverage in 2007 was more extensive than any tours offered so we spent a little time ashore just walking and identifying features of the town we recalled.
Port Douglas is a small town. It is one of the more popular vacation spots for Australians and a jumping off point for fishing, visiting the Great Barrier Reef and rain forest visits. It also boasts a Four Mile beach. The crocks, sharks and box jellyfish are less advertised. The tendering chores were shared between the Dawn’s launches and a couple of larger, more comfortable catamarans from the marina. Silverseas Tours seems to have the greatest share of the marine tour market here.
We had a leisurely breakfast then boarded one of the more comfortable vessels for our short trip ashore. The marina is full of pleasure craft most of which are available for charter and a bit earlier was the boarding point for tours to the reef. Between the docks and the parking lot are an array of shops targeting tourists. There were a number of motor coaches offering tours of the area or shuttle services to the business district of Port Douglas. A few hours earlier it was the boarding point for land tours.
Based partially on memory and a small map, we walked out of the marina heading for the town. We saw nothing really familiar during the first few minutes of our walk. As we walked toward the city centre there was a sense of familiarity. There is essentially one main street and it is possible to walk a loop from the marina through town back to the marina in less than 45 minutes which includes window shopping. Being Good Friday, some shops were not open and signs in restaurants apologized because they could not sell alcoholic beverages unless they accompanied a meal. So, unless one had some compelling desire to sample Port Douglas fare, why bother when the ship and its restaurants were available.
The weather in Port Douglas was mostly overcast with rain early in the day. We experienced no rain while ashore but the boats making the run to the reef apparently passed through a squall line that included torrential rain and a bit of hail. I can only imagine that was the big black cloud we could see to our east.