Saturday 9th November 2002

Today is our last full day in Australia! Tomorrow morning we'll fly back...

We decided to have a quiet day, no rush, just winding down and relaxing. We were planning to go to the Atherton Tablelands, but that would be a long drive. And again, the weather today isn't optimal, with lots of clouds. A bit like getting back to euro temperature. So no Atherton. (We'll have to come back some day anyway...)

We head down to Cairns, and stop at the Rex Lookout point on the Cook Highway, giving a nice view of the coast. While heading to Cairns we keep our eyes open for the road to the airport, which we'll need to take tomorrow.
In Cairns centre it's blazing hot, so we escape into the Central shopping centre, looking for some additional souvenirs. If you've seen one shopping centre you've seen them all. Again a clever foodcourt here. From here we head direction beach and pass Rusty's Markets, a locals weekly market. Cairns downtown all looks unimpressive, we have seen it all before. On top of this they are rearranging the esplanade, so you don't see a lot of the beach.

Early afternoon we head back to Port Douglas, but not before we have lunch at 'Hungry Jack', the local Burger King subsidiary.We have an Aussie Burger, an unusual combination of a burger, egg, bacon, tomato, lettuce (the usual) with red beetroot... A delicious burger anyway.

In Port Douglas we head back to the uphill lookout point for some more pictures/video. We get ourselves an afternoon smoothie, and head for 4 Mile Beach. Still a lot of wind here, waves, stinger danger,...

In the evening we have a complimentary dinner at hotel restaurant: 'Tempura fish and fries' That's just a nice name for 'fish and ships'...

We head back to our room and unpack and repack.

Pfffff...