North Queensland – (4) Port Douglas, Mossman and Palm Cove

I headed up to Port Douglas and Palm Cove for the last part of the trip. Having never been there before, I was keen to explore and experience the place.The main goal while I was up there was to visit the Mossman Gorge after seeing some pretty great photos on the net from there. The second morning I was up before sunrise (again) and jumped in the car and headed up to the entrance where there is now a tourist centre and shuttle buses to take you on the short trip to the river which started at 7.30. Well it was about 6am so decided to set off on foot to the gorge. Took me around 30 minutes to walk up there and once I was there I pretty much had the place to myself which was pretty cool. Earlier that night, QLD had its first heavy rain for the season, so the river was flowing but was a little dirty brown with all the extra dirt and sediment flowing down it from up river. It was still great to see and managed to get some cool shots of the lush vegetation with some early rays of sunlight beaming through. Probably one of my favourite shots of the whole trip.

Palm Cove was the last part of the tour and again I was up at around 4.30am both morning to capture the sunrise. The first morning I went down towards the pier to see what I could capture. It wasn’t the best sunrise, but I did manage to get some nice shots of the sun rising over the pier and calm waters. The second morning I went to palm alley which was towards the right hand side of the main beach. I came across this the day before as I was wondering around. Up early again, and at 4.30am I was shuffling sun chairs out the way which were inconveniently left under the palms and in my shot! Of course it was worth the effort though as the silhouettes of the palms in front of the colour of sunrise proved so spectacular. The conditions were almost perfect this morning, with scattered clouds and some amazing light, the result was pretty cool. Another favourite from the trip!

Canon 5D MkIII – 24-70mm