Port Douglas, Queensland

After an overnight stay in Cairns, had a lovely cooked breakfast at Mr Wolf in the town. Steve from Port O'Call Eco Lodge picked us up and drove us up to to Port Douglas, about an hour's journey.

MrD & I (and our younger son) stayed in the same YHA at Port Douglas 14 years ago, we always said we'd come back and here we are! There has been a lot of development in the town but it still has the same character and the YHA has been modernised a little but still very much as it was.

We had a walk around town, a nice lunch then a walk through Anzac Park which is where I'm standing taking this photo. The temperature is in the mid-30s, so we were glad of the shade of the trees. We got some groceries because we will be doing some self-catering over the next week whilst we're here.

Steve, the manager, had mentioned that there is a colony of fruit bats (flying foxes) across the road from the YHA, so MrD had a cider and I had some pink champagne whilst waiting for dusk to fall, around 7pm. We were not disappointed, there must have been tens of thousands because they streamed out of the tree tops across the road for about half an hour.

We have our own little gecko family hiding behind the air-con unit, they run around the ceiling every now and then but are no bother!

MrD has booked a special outing for us for Christmas Day but I'll tell you more about that next week!

Hope the weather is not too bad in UK and that everyone is safe and warm x