Well hello there Wednesday walkers all over the world walking and snapping away as you adventure through your day.
I hope that you are well and out there enjoying your life where ever you are and what ever you are doing so you can share your adventures here with us in this brilliant community created by @tattoodjay and to make all of us smile with @elizacheng in the quest to #makemesmile.
Today, I'd like to take you on a tour through pretty Port Douglas in Far North QLD.
[//]:# (!pinmapple -16.530535 lat 145.475624 long my life living in Port Douglas and visits thereafter d3scr)
Port Douglas has had a bit of a chequered history with it being the home of not only me...lol....🤣😂😅..but also back in the 1980's, the home of internationally disgraced businesss man, Christopher Skase, became Australia’s most famous corporate fugitive after his company, Qintex, collapsed in spectacular fashion.. ... and he fled Australia owing hundreds of millions of dollars and facing multiple charge of corporate impropriety....
One of the more apocryphal tales told about the late Australian business tycoon Christopher Skase, a posterboy for 80s decadence and cowboy entrepreneurialism, is that he sent a private jet from Port Douglas in far north Queensland to Melbourne to pick up a dress for his wife.
The “chase for Skase” resulted after revelations of his ongoing lavish lifestyle in Majorca in Spain became a cause celebre during the 1990s (it even spawned a satirical film). Comedian and TV host Andrew Denton created the crowdfunding prototype on the ABC when he asked people to donate towards hiring a bounty hunter to kidnap Skase and return him to Australia, raising $250,000 in pledges before the lawyers kyboshed the project.
The government of the day under John Howard also spent millions along with the Qintex liquidator trying to extradite Skase
And if you would like to read more about the chase for the corporate catastrophe Christopher Skase, then read on here....https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-wife-of-notorious-80s-businessman-christopher-skase-is-selling-her-collection-of-hermes-tops-and-theyre-not-worth-very-much-2018-10 and if you would like to see some of the very 'nice' houses in Port Douglas, then click on this link to find your new home!...https://www.domain.com.au/news/celebrity-escape-why-everyone-falls-in-love-with-port-douglas-20151103-gkpv2q/
And the Wildlife Habitat is the first thing you see when you drive in from the north AND it is a great place to visit too! https://www.wildlifehabitat.com.au/
And a great way to get an overview of Port D is to check out this sign here
Anyway, just 1 hour north of Cairns, Port Douglas is the halfway point between Cairns and the Daintree River which leads up into the magical Daintree Rainforest. If you haven't heard of the #Daintree Rainforest then check out this old post by me here to fall in love with it too....@chocolatescorpi/a-wednesday-walk-in-a-land-far-far-away-in-another-realm-full-of-forest-faeries-nymphs-and-a-wild-array-of-lawyers-vines-that-is
Macrossan Street
with everything you need and want...
Port Douglas is famous for it's everything really- resorts, restaurants, kite surfing, sailing, beaches, Crocodiles, being a getaway spot for so many domestic and international celebrities and even Bill Clinton on that fateful weekend back in 2001 with numerous scandals among the famous and not so famous (me really...🤣..) and I was lucky enough to live there and worked in one of the extraordinary restaurants called "Going Bananas' back in the early 2000's where Keifer Sutherland kissed me tenderly on the cheek and told me that I was the best bartender he had ever met. as he was there filming the Gaugin movie called Paradise Found https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287624/
Now I'm not sure if I have any photos of Going Bananas in my shoe boxes (I think I might have a couple somewhere I hope...) but suffice to say, that it was a world famous Restaurant, that was NOT a theatre restaurant, but very well could have been because of the antics by Alex and Monica the forever fighting owners, who were always dressed up to the nines, though Alex did not so much dress up, as put on a Kimono type robe and sarong every night and we had freedom to dress up as we pleased to, so ofcourse, we dressed up to the nines too and were allowed to socialise with the guests (this is starting to sound naughty, but it wasn't...lol...) it was just one of those places that casual customer service was recognised as being the way to deal with customers, rather than starch and ties and snooty smiles...(and I've worked in a few of those places too...)
Anyway, I hope one day to find some photos of us and this truly entertaining and exotic restaurant where you not only got the most scrumptious meals and cocktails (made by moi..😁..) but also weird, wonderful and totally unexpected 'shows' (and not dance shows or strip shows either people!)
RIP Alex you weird and wonderful man...(who looked very much like Gerard Depardeu too...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rard_Depardieu
So look at these lush, tree lined streets, how could you not want to walk down them every day (and soooo many nights at 3-4-5am...🤣. heading to the beach for an after party..😁..)
And have been going back every few years to catch up with old friends. Unfortunately the last time I went back was in 2015 when I took all these photos below and I've got so many to show you, cause there is so much to do and see in Port Douglas, so there will have to be chapter 2 next Wednesday.
A couple of locals just got off the bus....🤣
And they're headed to the tourist information centre...🤣
And this is the part where I tell you that I did also meet Bill Clinton in Port Douglas that very night on 9/11 when the twin towers went down in New York City as he was on holiday there to play a spot of golf and was having a beer at the Central Hotel there- which is the 2 story white board/plank 'Queenslander' style pub (where the sign says pokies..)
Anyway, At that time, I had a whole bunch of flatmates and we all used to work in the different restaurants around Macrossan Street there and always met up at the Central Hotel each night after work to have a drink and a game of pool while we were waiting for each other to finish so we would all drive home together. (unless we were going to a doof party (rave) somewhere then we would go and help each other finish work so they could leave earlier....🤣..)
Anyway, so I get there one night with Joey and Sharna and low and behold, there is Bill Clinton standing there with a just a couple of bodyguards very casually dressed in black shorts and shirts with colourful ties on AND there was NO-ONE ELSE AROUND ANYWHERE- We literally had him and the whole pub to ourselves except for a couple of old guys out the back room....So we shook his hand, had a chat for about 5minutes and then one of the bodyguards took a phone off to the side and within about 20 seconds they had his car there, threw him in it and were gone in a poof of hot n humid Port Douglas air, leaving us just standing there looking at each other going wow, that was weird.
Anyway, about an hour later we get home and one of the flatmates who's had the day off work, was laying on the lounge absolutely glued to the TV, utter shock frozen on his face and that's when we saw the live coverage of the towers going down. RIP 9/11...
And then about 5 minutes after we got home, our other 2 part time flatmates- Jana and TJ walked in the door, and as native Americans, the first thing that TJ said was wow, I wonder who bombed NYC (or something very similar to that anyway,,,...)
And then the Australian Feds (police) closed Port Douglas for the weekend, no one in or out as we had Bill there and they didn't know if someone was after him or not....
This is the Iron Bar, famous for it's Cane Toad races and the Banana's girls dancing our arses off there...🤣...
And here I would like to introduce you to the Courty- the Courthouse Hotel, probably one of the most famous bars in Australia, garnering that name because of it's history and age, as well as the amount of famous people that have A) partied their arses off there to big bands (me) or B) tried to close it down because of the noise pollution (definitely NOT me) and those that fall into category B are usually the people that come up to Port, fall in love with it BECAUSE of the Courty among the many other great attributes, then buy a mcmansion up there, and then start hating everything that they fell in love with and so try to lose it all down...anyhoooooo
Now you see these tourists walking across the pedestrian crossing from the Courthouse are off to the world famous.....
Port Douglas markets, off which I promise I will show you more when I post the market photos into #marketfriday hosted by the wonderful @dswigle.
The Markets are in a little park filled with delicious Palm trees
which not only houses this old church,
but also this cute little beach too!
Port Douglas is also famous for it's Four Mile beach called- yep you guessed it, Four Mile Beach.
This shot is taken looking right- south-ish
And this shot is taken from the same spot looking left- north-ish
And this is where we came across these guys
Having a freakin awesome time on the water
and catching air! I so want to try Kite Surfing one day!!!
Anyway, Like I said, I have so much more to show you of Port D, but that will have to wait for next Wednesday, as I need to pull the Chocolate Peanut fingers pout of the oven for @justinParkes #plantbased #cooking #challenge in the #naturalMedicine community and I'm on a deadline too! 😱@lotusshares/plant-based-cooking-challenge-week-23-come-join-us
So, I thankyou for joining part #1 of my tour of Port Douglas and hope you enjoyed it.
I look forward to seeing you here next week for part #2 to check out all of the other interesting and gorgeous spots that this place has to offer (but not alllll of them...as they say what happens in Port D, stays in Port D...🤣😂😅...😇...
Well, thank you all for reading and putting up with my rambling tonight and if you did make it this far, you are absolute champions!
And unless otherwise stated- ALL photographs, are all my originals taken by me sometime in the past decade or so somewhere in my travels and as such, ofcourse they are subject to all international IP and copyright laws and I may have already used them for my own commercial purposes here https://www.redbubble.com/people/CHOCOLATESCORPI/shop And here https://fineartamerica.com/art/chocolatescorpi, So please ask first if you want to use any of them as we wouldn't want you getting into trouble. Thank you 😊
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