To escape the stubborn Melbourne winter this year we decided to head up to Far North Queensland to the town of Port Douglas for some warmth. It’s a small town known for being a good launching point for exploring the Great Barrier Reef. We did a day trip to the reef when we visited Australia in 2011, so this time we decided to focus on inland activities. For the second year in a row we timed our holiday so it would coincide with our anniversary, because, why not?

We flew into Cairns, rented a car and drove the one hour up to Port Douglas. The road there is pretty breathtaking in parts as it winds along the Coral Sea.  You’ll have to take my word for it, since we didn’t take any photos.

The weather was not awesome for our first full day there, so we figured if it was going to be rainy, why not explore the rainforest that was nearby! There were crazy trees everywhere and we took a nice hike through the forest and crossed a scary suspension bridge.

Port Douglas is known for its beach – “Four Mile Beach” – which is funny to me since they don’t use miles here. It’s a very long, flat beach that seems to go on forever. One day we walked about 4 miles down the beach, but there seemed to be more beach after that. So the name doubly doesn’t make sense!

One of Sara’s co-workers declared that the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway was “ace”, so we decided to give it a go.

It was an amazing experience, we took a gondola about 7.5 kilometers with two stops go get off and view the rainforest and Barron Falls.

The gondola ends in a town called Kuranda, where we got lunch and hiked around a little. Then we took an old-timey train back down the mountain while we heard stories about how hard the train was to build. The train had one stop as well from the opposite side of the waterfall . Apparently during the wet season, the waterfall is quite the spectacle. It was pretty cool to see even during the dry season.

Back in Port Douglas, we noticed the beach had little balls of sand everywhere and seemed to be moving as you walked towards it.

We learned that the beach is home to the Sand Bubbler Crab, they seem to have the terrible job of hiding in the sand until the tide goes down and then harvesting the sand for any food in it and discarding the sand in little balls near their hole. I found them fascinating, they made the beach look like art.

One bar in town hosts a nightly “Cane Toad Race” and that came recommended by multiple people.  We went one night and were disappointed that the toads didn’t actually race as much as sit around and do nothing.

For the most part we just relaxed, read some books and just enjoyed the break from the Melbourne winter. I realized it had been 5 months since our prior vacation, which is way too long for me to stay sane!