Australian Christmas Day 3

Our third day in Australia was mainly a travel day. We got up and got packed, and drove an hour to the Brisbane Airport. After parking our car at an offsite carpark and getting a bus to shuttle us to the airport we checked in with Jet Star Airlines (a domestic Australian airlines) and had a nice lunch at the airport before flying to Cairns. The flight was about 2 hours, and the 10 of us made it there very uneventfully.

We were picked up in Cairns and driven via shuttle to Port Douglas, about 45 minutes from Cairns. The drive was just beautiful, very scenic winding roads through where the rainforest literally meets the ocean.



This is Sebastian looking so grown up to his old Auntie...on the drive from the airport to Port Douglas.

The beaches here are just beautiful, but there is pretty much no one on them as it is "stinger" season and the water hides beautiful but deadly jellyfish. There are small areas of ocean that are basically netted off and available for swimming, or you can wear a stinger suit in the ocean that is made of nylon rash guard type material. We all had to wear these when we were on the Great Barrier Reef.

The quick driver and the winding coastal roads took some getting used to, as we were on the "wrong" side of the road! I kept feeling like we were going to have a head-on collision.

Clive and Johanna had arranged for us to have a 4 bedroom apartment type hotel room. Complete with kitchen, a beautiful balcony that became a wonderful breakfast spot and even a clothes washer, this worked out to be the perfect accomodations for our two families...all 10 of us! Besides the apartment being great, "Club Tropical" also had a wonderful waterfall pool that the kids loved.



One of my favorite things about the hotel was the fishpond/courtyard. There was a beautiful large fishpond in the middle of the buildings, with large concrete stepping stones scattered across the length of it. This was really the best way to get to your room, so you would step across the stepping stones, surrounded by lily pads, large koi fish and beautiful flowers. Every time I crossed it I felt a little like being in a fairy tale!





We ended the evening walking around Port Douglas, visiting the shops and having a wonderful dinner. We even met George..."the Groper". More on that next!