Position 16:29.165S 145:27.56E

Port Douglas is a bustling holiday town and the marina is full of every kind of charter boat offering everything from catamaran day trips to live aboard dive trips to the reef. There are numerous shops, bars and restaurants, lots of traditional English type ‘pubs’ with big flat screens where people congregate to watch ‘Aussie Rules’ (some kind of Australian football game using three goal posts and where the players wear gay type sleeveless t shirts).

We caught the local town bus to the ‘Habitat’ park with the Jackamy’s and The Miss Tippy’s and we had a great day walking amongst and feeding the wallabies, kangaroos, emus and other bird life. Lots of the wallabies were carrying babies in their pouches and every now and then a little head or foot would appear, one baby even got out of the pouch and then jumped back in again head first.

Returning to Port Douglas, the girls did a bit of shopping while the boys had a beer and we rounded the day off with delicious Barramundi & chips with minted mushy peas in one of the fish restaurants.

We have refuelled this morning and we are debating when to leave and where to stop next as we are desperate to try out our new diving gear on the great barrier reef. We have a lot of miles to cover to get to Darwin on time, but it seems that all the interesting places are around 50 to 100 miles from here, so we plan some stops over the next few days and then a long slog to cover the 1200 miles to Darwin.