We’ve just spent 8 days in Port Douglas with Kids and it was absolutely awesome. It’s hard pressed to decide whether a week in Port Douglas with kids trumps a week on Hamilton Island. I just can’t decide. Port Douglas has a lot more to do with varying types of activities. Port Douglas wins but weather wise Hamilton Island is the winner with more moderate heat.

Enough of comparing the two, they are both fantastic but this post is all about Port Douglas.

This region is one of the few areas in the world where two World Heritage sites meet. You have the magestic Daintree Forest and the iconic Greay Barrier Reef.

We absolutely loved Port Douglas!

I feel like this is one of the most beautiful parts of the natural world. It is raw and completely real. It leaves you reminded that there are some places in the world where humans are just curators or visitors.

In this post I will share where we stayed, what we did and where we ate. Together with my thoughts on all of it of course. Some of the places we visited were so special that they deserve their own post altogether. That’s places like Hartleys Crocodile Adventues and the Daintree Rainforest Day Tour but I will get there in time. For now I just want to give you an outline so if you’re planning a trip you know what to do.

First Top Tip: book your restaurants NOW! I saw loads of people being turned away and we weren’t even visiting during school holidays.

Second Top Tip: book your car hire! I will go into this in a bit more detail below but if you’re hiring a car, and I suggest you do, book it as soon as your flights.

Before we get to the suggestions and ideas I’m going to share a bit of basic information that I did not know at all before we visited. In hindsight, these are things I should have known long before making the decision to visit Port Douglas.

Port Douglas with Kids

The basic general information you should know

Port Douglas is in FAR NORTH Queensland. This means three things,

1. It takes a while to get there from Sydney and you fly into Cairns and then you still have to drive 50 / 60kms.
2. It is hot and humid. (I am very much a lizard so this is perfect for me).
3. You can’t swim in the sea because of stingers and/or crocs.

Now I knew the third thing and that is why we chose to stay in a resort with 8 swimming pools.

I also had an inkling about the second thing but I didn’t quite grasp just how hot it is. It is so hot that December is out of season. When we visited in March / April it was in the 30s and the pool water was about 35 degrees because it is just that hot everywhere. I don’t sweat generally but I did in Port Douglas, even my kids had sweat down their faces for the first few days as they adjusted.

Of the three points above, I didn’t realise that you don’t fly into Port Douglas. I let my husband book all the tickets and that is why I was probably a bit useless about this. Port Douglas is 50 / 60kms north of Cairns and it will take you an hour to 90 minutes to travel between the two. The Captain Cook highway is incredibly beautiful but it is very windy and curves along the coast. There are also road works in sections at the moment and sections of 40kms / hour so it can easily take 90 minutes to crawl along the highway.

Should you hire a car?

Given the distance between Cairns and Port Douglas an airport transfer is going to cost you around $199 one way for 2 people. So yes, hire a car!

Aside from the airport transfer aspect, there is also SO much to do and see in the area that you want to be mobile. You want to be able to shoot down to Hartleys (20 minutes south) or up to Mossman Gorge.

And depending on where you are staying you may want to drive into the town. For us from the Sheraton it is a 5 minute drive and we could have probably hired bikes but in that heat with two kids in two, no thank you! There are also only 2 taxis in Port Douglas and the one ran 30 minutes behind schedule the one night.

Yes! Hire a car!

So in short, I would hire a car. Hire it from Cairns Airport and hire it as soon as you book plane tickets because the cars go quickly.

If you are visiting Cairns or Port Douglas with kids under 7 you need to get car seats too so make sure to ask at the time of booking. There is a service up there that you can rent seats from but it is extra admin that you don’t need. We forgot to book a car seat and when we got to Avis there were none left.

Now let’s get to the fun part. What there is to do! Just make sure you factor in some down days because you will want to do nothing except laze by the pool.

For lots of pictures and videos check out the AllThingsMomSydney Facebook Page or the AllThingsMomSydney Instagram Profile.

Where we stayed

I reckon we stayed in the best resort in Port Douglas – the Sheraton Grand Mirage. (Be careful if you are booking you don’t book the resort with exactly the same name in Gold Coast).

It has everything we needed, loads of swimming pools, nice rooms, air con in all the buildings, food and drinks at the pool, friendly staff, a golf course and a gym. The grounds are also beautiful and fitting for the tropics. Just be careful of falling coconuts.

The Sheraton is magnificent. The major draw card is the pools. It has swimming pools that extend all along the resort between the buildings and the beach. No photo I took did it justice, I would need a drone to convey it best. You can actually see the pools easily on Google Maps, that’s how big the pools are. My kids played frisbee and took their giant lilos through the pool and there was no issue because there is just so much space.

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Along the pool are private cabanas that you can rent for $50 a day or you can find a pool lounger alongside the pool. We didn’t rent one because they were all booked up for the duration of our stay so it isn’t completely necessary but may have been nice to do so.

The two things I would mention about the rooms is:

1. not all rooms have baths and the baths are nice and big for the kids to wallow in after being in the heat all day; and
2. the swimming pool view rooms are lovely but not very private.

Aaah, I just got distracted by thoughts of cocktails at the pool.

What to do in Port Douglas with Kids

There is not much to do in the town of Port Douglas other than eat at some great restaurants, get ice creams or use it as a launch pad to other areas. It is home to a Coles, bottle stores and pharmacies too though. And also one of the most well stocked swimming costume shops I have ever been into.

The activities below are all in the Port Douglas area or en route to Port Douglas from Cairns. I’m going to list them in line with what we did on each day we were there. This is not in order of preference. You will be able to tell what we loved from what I say under each.

What we should have done but didn’t…

There is also one thing I really really wanted to do but it was closed on Good Friday which was the only day we could visit. Had I known about it I would have booked it straight after the flight. The Australian Armour & Artillery Museum. I remember going on tankers as a child and it was so much fun so I would have loved for my kids to experience this. Next time we are definitely visiting that.

This museum is in Cairns so you would want to do it on the day you arrive or leave. It is right next door to Sky Rail too if you want to combine those two. With smaller kids, I’m not sure Sky Rail is a good idea though.

Skyrail

Sky Rail website: https://www.skyrail.com.au/

This website confused me to no end and I actually had to have long conversations with a real person at Skyrail to understand what was what.

Skyrail is a company and it has two attractions. 1) The Skyrail and 2) Kuranda Scenic Railway.

The Skyrail is the cable car that goes up over the forest into the mountains and to the town Kuranda. It’s like the Cable Cars that are at Sydney Taronga only a much longer course.

Skyrail is an hour trip from the Cairns side to Kuranda and an hour back. Kuranda is a small little village where you can pop in for a visit before your return trip back. We didn’t get out and explore and only stopped to get an ice cream at the cable car terminal.

During the Skyrail trip, there are two stops you can get out and walk through the forest or look at the waterfall. At one point you have to get out and change cable cars anyway. On Skyrail you go up really high and can see over the whole of Cairns and out to sea, you go over the forest and a river. It is beautiful but very very hot and doesn’t give you a real understanding of the scale of what you are seeing.

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From Kuranda (where the Skyrail takes you to) you can get on the Kuranda Railway that takes you through the forest. We didn’t get to do this as it was fully booked out. Maybe my kids would have preferred this to Skyrail.

In hindsight, I should not have booked this on a boiling hot day just after we had spent 3 hours on a plane… Well we live and learn.

This is something you can do if you’re visiting Cairns or Port Douglas with kids.

Hartleys Crocodile Adventures

Hartley’s website: https://www.crocodileadventures.com/

Far North Queensland is home to crocodiles. A lot of them. There are a few ways to see them:

1. Accidentally (the least favoured option)
2. In the Wild on a tour
3. At Hartleys.

Hartleys has to be hands down one of the best animal encounters we have ever had. It’s not the facility as much as it is the people you meet who are deeply involved in crocodiles, the crocodiles and the level of education you get.

Both my kids (who hate to agree) said that this was their favourite experience of the holiday. It beat Great Barrier, the rain forest and even free ice creams at the pool.

I am not sure we would ever have been exposed to that much about these ferocious creatures had we not visited Hartleys. I actually shudder to think of the stupid or uneducated things we may have thought or done if we had not visited.

Included in the price of your ticket is a boat trip around the lagoon where you get to see crocs free swimming.

In my opinion this is a must do if you’re visiting Cairns or Port Douglas with kids. And you should do it as soon as you get to the area so that you are well versed in what to expect in the area.

I am definitely going to get to a full post on Hartleys when I have the time but for now these are my top tips:

1. You have to watch the Croc Attack show (currently at 3pm)
2. Expect it to be really hot and wear really cool clothes.
3. Try get to the Croc Feeding show.
4. Meet Dave over at the photographs who will let you touch the baby croc and snake if they are with him.
5. Feed the kangeroos.
6. Don’t miss the reticulated python Psycho Sally (safely in her own area).
7. Take a picnic lunch and plan to spend all day there.
8. Do not miss your boat trip time.
9. Make sure you have loads of battery on your phone or your camera.

There is no phone reception at most parts of Hartleys which is also just fantastic because it means you’re completely present in what you are experiencing.

Half Day Trip to Low Isles

There are a few options for Great Barrier Reef trips. Leaving from Cairns or Port Douglas. You can:

• snorkel in 3 different places on some (Calypso Tours), or
• take a trip out to the Pontoon (with Quicksilver) or
• you can visit an island and use that as a base (Calypso, Wavedancer, Sailaway Tours).

My kids are 8 and 6 and while they are good swimmers they are not the types to spend 4 hours in water they can’t touch the bottom of. For this reason we decided to make our Great Barrier Reef Experience an island based trip. We also did a half day. In better weather we should have done a full day. I have said this before, half a day is not enough and doesn’t justify the boat trip out.

Top Tip: phone each tour operator. Find out where they leave from. Unfortunately, it is not always clear from the website. You don’t want to be staying in Port Douglas but departing from Cairns. Also ask what time they leave, what is included and whether there is air con on board.

In hindsight, I would not have booked who we went with. Despite recommendations, the boat was too small and with no air con there was a lot of seasickness.

Low Isles itself was great. It’s tiny and not too far from shore. It even has bathrooms which is generally unheard of. We just had a bad day with very high tides and low visibility. The kids saw more while standing on the sand (turtles and sharks) than I did in the water for 40 minutes.

A round of golf at Mirage Country Club

Of course my son brought his golf clubs. Of Course he did! My husband hired from the country club and all together with the kart, balls and tees and green fees it was $90.

The course is in a great setting. Sundowners watching the sun go down behind the mountains over the green is beautiful.

Just make sure you play the front 9 as the back 9 has had a few crocodilian visitors.

The country club also has a gym, lap pool and tennis courts which you can use if you’re staying at the hotel. There is also a driving range which you hit off into the water.

Full day Daintree Forest Tour

We did it with Daintree Rainforest Tours: https://daintreetours.com/ . I would also consider https://www.walkaboutadventures.com.au/ , I think we will go with them when the kids are a bit older.

I thought that we could explore the Daintree ourselves but I am really really glad we didn’t. The Daintree is a little confusing because parts of it are around you already, there is a town called Daintree and then there is also a discovery center. So if you don’t know where you’re going or what to do it is a little overwhelming.

Next time we will do it alone but to be on a guided tour is just so much better. We went to places I did not know existed and learned things I never thought we would.

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We went on a 10 hour tour and the kids were interested and engaged throughout. I didn’t know my kids were capable of that!

I would also highly recommend who we went with because the tour included so many things. We:

1. Had tea at a secluded beach.
2. Crossed the river ferry (the kids loved this short crossing).
3. Visited Cape Tribulation.
4. Took two walks through the forest.
5. Went on a crocodile boat tour through the mangroves.
6. Had lunch in the forest at a restaurant I would never have known existed.
7. Swam in an secluded river in the forest.
8. Walked through Mossman Gorge.

In terms of value for money – you cannot beat this tour. I would however say that for little kids, it would be far too much time in the car. Next time we go I would love to go with an indigenous guide. Either one of the Dreamtime tours out of Mossman Gorge Center or go with Walkabout.

Where to eat in Port Douglas with Kids

I had heard that you need to make restuarant bookings in advance, well that is completely true. If you are wanting to eat at Salsa, Harrisons, Sassi, Nautilis, Melaleuca, Zinc book in advance!!

Hi-tide

This is a breakfast spot just across the road from Four Mile Beach. While it is in a hotel or something like that it is very separate. We had a lovely breakfast here and would definitely visit it again.

We didn’t have to book in advance so you could probably just pop in unless its school holidays.

Salsa

I had heard rave reviews about Salsa and everyone I spoke to said book for sunset. When I tried to book two weeks in advance I couldn’t get a booking but we managed to get one last minute. I’m not entirely convinced it was worth the hype. The Seafood Linguine was tops, but menu limited. Staff and service great but it was busy busy and felt like a train station. Sadly, given the prices and the atmosphere, I’m not sure we will be back.

I would visit for cocktails though.

Zinc

Zinc website: https://www.zincportdouglas.com/

Dinner recommendation here. Oh my goodness, Zinc was an absolute gem of a find. The food was incredible. From the kids pasta to my lamb gnocchi, the steak and the mushroom gyoza to start… it was all delicious. The service was perfect even with two tired kids wanting to eat at different times and changing their minds. Wine list good, location a bit more smarter than Salsa but without the pretence.

I had to stop my husband from eating here every night, it just was such a lovely experience.

The only thing that may not be to people’s liking is that it is at the quiet end of the main street as opposed to near the wharf.

Chilly‘s Pizza

Chilly’s website: https://chillyspizza.com/

Another fantastic spot and a complete fluke. This is the most laid back restaurant I have visited since my early 20s. Set in the garden out back with lights swinging overhead and the birds going mental. This is such a cool spot. It is very laid back and rustic but so tropical.

We did a takeaway after a long day but I wished we could have sat down and just chilled. The pizzas were awesome as was the cheese garlic pizza bread. The kids bolognaise and the greek salad were also good.

When it is that hot and you just want to relax and unwind this is definitely the type of place you want to eat at with kids.

N17 Burgers

We had burger take out the one night from N17. I had read so many reviews that I thought it would be a great find. There are no MacDonalds or Hungry Jacks in Port Douglas so this is probably your burger place to go to. It wasn’t as good as I had hoped but maybe sit down would have been better.

Ice cream Ice cream Ice cream

There are a few ice cream spots in Port Douglas. We tried at least three but kept going back to one in particular. Shakes Gelati Bar was the kids absolute favourite and adults too. They’re in the Portico Shopping Center so the end of the main road where Zinc is.

Where we wanted to eat but didn’t get to

Iron Bar

I think in hindsight we should have gone to Iron Bar instead of Salsa or N17. It looks awesome for burgers, steaks and chops. With tin exterior and gold rush vibes, it also has an atmosphere that you want to try out. It’s definitely on our list to do next time

Little Larder

With a great reputation and a solid menu, I would have liked to eat here but we just ran out of time. Next time we visit I am going to book this in. While it is in the main street so not a great view it does look worthwhile.

Some more spots to consider…

Breakfast
	St Crispins Cafe & Events
	Toast	Still haven’t figured out where this is yet…
Lunch
	Lure Restaurant	At the Marina
	Tin Shed	Iconic restaurant overlooking the water. I have heard a lot about the experience – very relaxed and involving a bucket of prawns. Would also be great for early dinner to watch the sunset over the water.
Dinner	Sassi	Smart Italian restaurant.
	The Court House	This is a big restaurant with great live music. Maybe better for early evenings.
	Harrisons	This is the restaurant at the Sheraton and to my knowledge the only chef hatted restaurant in Port Douglas. Maybe not a good idea if you are eating out in Port Douglas with kids in tow.
	Beach Shack	I’m not sure I saw this place despite looking. It’s meant to be a great chilled little spot and I had heard it was good for tapas.
Take Aways
	Daves	This is a super super relaxed take away place. I have heard good things about their chicken and their fish but was a little distracted by the offer of hotdogs on the menu.

That’s all I’ve got for now. When we visit again, because we will, I will add to this post.

I wish all the photos I took did this magic spot justice. They don’t. You need to go and see it for yourself. Just make sure you check the temperatures beforehand and you pack accordingly.

Please reach out to me if you have any questions. Pop a comment below and I will reach out or drop me a note on instagram. I only check Facebook weekly so please don’t message me on that forum.

If you have visited Port Douglas with kids recently and you have something to add, please do share.