Ravenshoe to the Coast

We had a beautiful day for travelling today. Across the Atherton Tablelands the  road took us through attractive little towns, past canefields, avocado farms, peanut plantations, and coffee bushes in full bloom.  Then, passing throughstretches of tropical savannah, wetlands and rainforest the road eventually wound down the Great Dividing Range towards the coast.

Philip Googled "caravan parks near Port Douglas" yesterday, and made a booking online.   We knew it was on the Captain Cook Highway and had a beach frontage, but could find no sign of it.  We did get an impression of Port Douglas itself.  As Philip remarked, "We don't even own clothes posh enough to fit in here!"  At this point I turned on the maps ap on my phone and found that the "Ellis Beach Leisure Park" is in fact at Ellis Beach, which is about 40 km south of Port Douglas.  The children were a bit fed up at having to drive even further after thinking we were "nearly there", but even they got excited when we began to catch glimpses of the sea through the trees. 

For most of the way the road actually ran right beside the Coral Sea, with steep cliffs and mountains on the other side.

So here we are, at Ellis Beach.  We were allocated a beach front spot right at the end of the row of caravans, which means no-one can park in front of us and block this view:

What we are looking at when we sit under the awning in front of the caravan.

Not too bad, eh?  I think we can probably find things to do here over the next six days.  The children got to work straight away, building a castle and digging a river.  We asked one of the caretakers if it was possible to swim here, to which he said, "Yeah, sure! You can swim eh. [Queenslanders add "eh" to the end of almost every sentence, eh.] Stingers?  No- they haven't come in yet eh.  The season officially starts on the 1st of November- that's when the put up the stinger net, eh.  Meanwhile they drag every day.  Yeah, no problems.  It's fine to swim, eh. Especially if the water's a bit choppy like it is now, and when we've had a bit of rain, eh. They don't come in then, eh. Personally I wouldn't go swimming."  So, weighing it all up, we've told the kids we'll save swimming for the pool, and at the beach they can only get their feet wet.  So three seconds later Arthur "accidentally" got caught by a wave and was wet from head to toe, while Esther "only needed to rinse the sand off her legs" and was likewise soaked!

Double Island in th distance.  The kids are sure it's Neverland!

As I'm typing, the tide has come in and the waves are crashing onto the sand only metres away from the van.  A soothing sound at bedtime.