Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
A town between reef and rainforest.
An introduction to Port Douglas, the coastal town where Wildlife Habitat stands at the end of the road in from the Captain Cook Highway.
On this page
Read the town
Port Douglas was founded in 1877 as a port for the goldfields inland, and took its name that November from the Queensland Premier John Douglas. A cyclone in 1911 destroyed or badly damaged almost every building.
A guide can give context without turning a town into a backdrop. Notice how the town meets the sea, and how the road in from the highway passes land that once grew sugar cane.
Reef and rainforest
The town lies next to two World Heritage areas, the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest, and is known for the long sands of Four Mile Beach.
Begin with a detail and ask how it changes through the year: the seasons, the flowering of the trees, the birds that come and go. A photograph alone cannot tell you that.
A Wildlife Habitat chapter
Wildlife Habitat shows one side of the town: the wildlife of the reef coast, the rainforest and the savannah, gathered on an old cane field.
Look at the meeting of the two: the sugar country the town grew from, and the habitats that now stand on it.
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
Links lead to the original publishers.
