Port Douglas

Welcome to your holiday. Port Douglas (Port or PD) is equal parts flash and fun, from the million-dollar marina to the dreamy Four Mile Beach and the five-star resorts big enough to warrant their own postcode.

The peninsula was the traditional home of the Yirrganydji people until European settlement turned it into a remote port and fishing village. Port Douglas really developed in the 1980s, thanks largely to the late entrepeneur Christopher Skase, becoming a sophisticated and upmarket resort town that's quite a contrast to Cairns' tourist scene. PD is well connected: the outer Great Barrier Reef is less than an hour offshore, the Dickson Inlet and estuary is packed with fish and crocs, and sunset sailing from the marina is too good to pass up.

A growing number of flashpackers, cashed-up couples and fiscally flush families choose Port Douglas over Cairns as their Far North base, and for good reason.