Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
A coast between rainforest and reef.
An introduction to the coast between Cairns and Port Douglas, where Hartley’s stands beside the Captain Cook Highway.
On this page
Read the coast road
The Captain Cook Highway runs north from Cairns to Port Douglas, squeezed between the sea and the forested slopes of the Macalister Range. Hartley’s stands beside it at Wangetti, between the two towns.
A guide can give context without turning a landscape into a backdrop. Notice where the road meets the beaches, how the range drops to the sea, and how the park’s wetland sits between the two.
Woodland, rainforest and wetland
The park’s boardwalks pass through eucalypt woodland, rainforest and melaleuca wetland, and its land adjoins the World Heritage-listed rainforests of the Wet Tropics.
Begin with a detail and ask how it changes through the year: the level of the lagoon, the flowering of the trees, the birds that come and go. A photograph alone cannot tell you that.
A Hartley’s chapter
Hartley’s shows one side of this coast: a roadside stop of the 1930s that grew into a crocodile farm and wildlife park.
Look at the meeting of the two: the old story of the coast road, and the crocodiles, cassowaries and koalas of the region today.
Make room for context
Pair this reading with the park’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places or represents the people who run them.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
- Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures: Explore the park
- Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures: History
- Wikipedia: Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures
Links lead to the original publishers.
