Coral Reef, Sugar Cane and Rainforest

Spent the last three days looking around Port Douglas are.  From Cairns to Port Douglas we stopped a Palm Cove - known as Post cared picture area as you can see with the four people sitting onthe beach.

 Irene and Neil boarded a large boat to head for the Coral Reef. As you can see this is huge boat - 45 metres long -over double the length of Neil's farm shop - could seat 495 passengers.  They went out to the reef and spent the day - Neil snorkeling and helicopter ride over the reef. Irene took the submersible boat to see the coral and fish.  Rose and I decided not go as we had  to the reef before but after we heard about their day we wondered if we should have went again.

We stayed for 3 nights at a very nice campground. It was almost like having an entire resort to yourself as this was the off season.  You can see the pool and camp kitchen. Had to get share the space with  the geckos that run very fast.

Close to our campground there were sugar can farms and the campground manager had  farmer come over so we could learn about sugar cane farming in case Neil and Darren want to start growing cane in Harptree.  The farmer brought over cane and explained the whole process to us including how they plant and harvest, transport on farmer owned cane railway which goes to a farmer owned sugar mill.  You can see Neil tasting the raw can but after it goes through the process at the mill it comes out as brown sugar.

Spent Saturday at the Mossman Gorge in the Daintree National Park walking through the rainforest and swimming in the Mossman gorge river pool.  The pool was very refreshing after the walk.

Saw wild turkeys in the rainforest.