The winner of Tourism Port Douglas & Daintree’s $6,500 holiday to Port Douglas and The Daintree is Brisbane travel agent, Rachael Nehmer (pictured left with Skye Collie from Parker Travel Collection).

Rachael is planning to bring her Mum with her to experience the holiday of a lifetime put together by the Port Douglas and Daintree region’s tourism operators.

“I’m still processing the news that I’ve actually won, but I’ve already decided to bring my Mum with me on the trip - she deserves a pampering holiday and this will be just perfect for both of us,” said Rachael, who has a Diploma of Tourism and has worked at Atlas Travel Service in the West End, Brisbane for three years.

Rachael entered the travel agent’s online competition organised by Tourism Port Douglas Daintree after attending a North Queensland information night. She is originally from Townsville, and says she loves Port Douglas & Daintree and is looking forward very much to visiting it as an adult.

“I remember we visited some family friends in Port Douglas when I was young as I recall lush rainforest and driving along the beautiful coastline. I love a bit of adventure, including skydiving, bungy jumping, hot air ballooning and abseiling so I am excited to try things like jungle surfing and heli adventures, which are totally new to me.”

The online competition was organised by Tourism Port Douglas Daintree from a database of over 8,000 emails and received 1300 entries.
TPDD’s Doug Ryan said the campaign achieved its goals of promoting the destination, increasing destinational awareness to agents, driving traffic to www.tpdd.com.au and maintaining strong relationship links with the target audience of retail travel agents and wholesale sales staff.

“With excellent member support, we’ve had great outcomes to this online campaign which generated nearly 3,000 referral emails which agents sent as part of the competition,” he said. “The competition website page at www.tpdd.com.au was visited 2500 times over the 3 month competition period and the page rated in the Top 10 most visited pages on the website. The highest visitation was from Australia, New Zealand, United States, United Kingdom and Germany, top cities were were Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland and Adelaide. After entering, over 60% of browsers visited other pages of the site, including the Hot Deals, Things to Do,Great Barrier Reef, Port Douglas page, Image Library and Accommodation.”

The campaign was distributed via e-marketing, industry newsletters, flyers delivered to domestic travel agents by Parker Travel (domestic market consultants to TPDD) and during road shows and sales calls.

Rachael Nehmer’s 7 night Holiday of a Lifetime prize includes:
- Flights from the nearest Australian Capital City
- 3 nights accommodation Regal Port Douglas with outdoor jacuzzi
- 3 nights accommodation Coconut Grove, Port Douglas with private pool/spa
- 1 night accommodation Daintree Eco Lodge Spa Bayan incl welcome drinks,
- 30 minute Wellness Experience in the Daintree Wellness Spa +
- Unique Aboriginal welcome gift
- Private airport transfers with Exemplar Coaches & Limousines
- Mason’s ½ day 4WD Cape Tribulation tour
- Quicksilver Outer Barrier Reef Cruise
- Flames of the Forest Aboriginal Cultural Experience
- Skysafari Helicopter tour
- Avis Car hire 48hours of a Rav4 vehicle or similar
- Solar Whisper River Cruise
- Mermaids Hair & Makeup do
- Dinner at 2Fish
- Dinner at Sublime Bar & Grill
- Jungle Surfing Canopy Tour

Vision Hotels and Resorts’ flagship property, The Lakes Cairns Resort and Spa is once again a winner with families.  The resort was advised it had won a top ten place in Holidays with Kids’ family accommodation award for the second year running.

The Lakes Cairns was the only North Queensland property to make the list in the 4 ½ star and above category.

This latest commendation for the resort as a top pick with families follows last year’s success in being included in Expedia Insiders’ Select list and TripAdvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards Top 10 Places to Stay for Families in both 2009 and 2010.

General Manager of Vision Hotels and Resorts, Craig Biber said “We are thrilled to learn this news after what has been an exciting and challenging year for North Queensland tourism.  Awards like this are a boost for our hard working and dedicated team.”
Situated only 3km from the Cairns International Airport and 3km from the Cairns CBD, The Lakes Cairns Resort and Spa is an award-winning 4.5 star resort situated on 4ha of lush tropical gardens, scenic lakes and large resort style pools.

Tangalooma’s internationally renowned wild dolphin family welcomed a new calf last night with proud mum Tangles introducing her first offspring to a crowd of delighted onlookers.

Dolphin Care team manager, Susan Hassard said Tangles, a regular to the provisional feeding program, was showing all the signs of being a wonderful mother, choosing to stay out of the feeding fray to protect her newborn, who was less than 24-hours old.

“We are so excited to see this new baby appear, we’ve been waiting on its arrival for a few weeks now,” Mrs Hassard said.

“The calf is surprisingly small – only about 70 to 80 centimetres in length and weighing an estimated 15 to 20 kilos, and mum is keeping a very tight reign on things for the moment.

“Tangles stayed well back from the shore and took only a few fish from one of the dolphin care team before taking off with her calf in tow.

“We are always very cautious with newborns when they come in and try to avoid interfering with that all-important bonding time that happens during the first few weeks.

“But Tangles is showing all the signs of being an excellent mother and this will give her little one a great chance of survival.”

Mrs Hassard said research indicates that first-born calves have up to a 50 per cent the mortality rate.

“However, Tangles has been raised with the dolphin program,” Mrs Hassard said.

“Over the past 10 years, as she’s matured, she has watched how the other calves - Storm, Phoenix and Silhouette - were raised, so her instincts are well honed.

“Tangalooma’s dolphins are very successful at raising strong and healthy offspring with an incredible 100 per cent survival rate to date.

“Mum and bub will stick like glue for the first two months and then we’ll see a separation of about one metre occur between the two as the calf begins to build confidence and some of the basic skills.

“Because the dolphins are wild, it may be some months before we are able to identify the sex of the calf.

“In the meantime, we’ll be able to see how his or her personality develops and that will help give us some clues for an appropriate name.”

The Canopy Rainforest Tree Houses and Wildlife Sanctuary on the Atherton Tablelands will celebrate the return of its resident male cassowary, Tui.

According to The Canopy’s owners and wildlife carers, David and Sharon Gibson, Tui has been an annual visitor since 1991 (when he was just 18 months old) – returning in the first week of December – most often with a couple of chicks in tow.
“It is believed that when Tui goes walkabout during the mating season from May to December – he heads coast wards to Wooroonooran National Park to find his mate.    Male cassowaries raise the young with the female leaving as soon as the eggs are laid.  The male will sit on the eggs for 50 days and after hatching, will proceed to care for the chicks for around 10 months.

“We are lucky to have 100 acres of rare, upland mesophyll vine forest which in itself is one of the largest untouched tracts of rainforest on the Cairns highlands.  As such, we enjoy a phenomenally high density of unique wildlife that not only includes cassowaries, but Lumholtz tree kangaroos, green possums, platypus, pademelon wallabies, coppery brushtail possums and northern bandicoots as well.  We feel very privileged to be the custodians of this very precious, special place,” Sharon said.

Purpose built for comfort in the wilderness, The Canopy Rainforest Tree Houses and Wildlife Sanctuary has five, luxury timber and glass tree houses perched high in the rainforest canopy on the banks of the flowing Ithaca River.  Guests will wake to a serenade of birdsong every morning as an ever-changing parade of rainforest birds make themselves at home on the balcony.

To book, email: stay@canopytreehouses.com.au or 07 4096 5364 

Cattleman Gordon Pringle who owns Australian Muster Experience backing on to the beautiful rainforest of Daintree National Park, a short drive north of Port Douglas, is looking forward to tomorrow night’s much anticipated airing of HBO’s The Pacific on Channel Seven.  The 10-Part Miniseries was filmed on his properties at Rocky Point.Australian tourism is set to benefit when HBO’s, The Pacific airs on Channel Seven tomorrow night.  

Dramatic coastlines, vast expanses of beach, dense rainforest and arid outback provide a rich and romantic cinematic landscape for this epic 10-part miniseries. Executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, The Pacific is a multi-million dollar production filmed on location in the tropical north – namely Rocky Point - north of Port Douglas.

Managing Director of Australian Muster Experience and Five Star Venues and owner of the land where the mini-series was filmed, Gordon Pringle said he was honoured to make his slice of paradise available to film crews and cast members for the duration of the eight month shoot.

"Not only does this production effectively showcase the beauty of the region to millions of viewers, worldwide, it also highlights the diversity of the area to future production companies looking for spectacular locations.  On a personal level, I am confident The Pacific will greatly enhance our efforts in marketing the destination."

In an excerpt from correspondence with Pringle following the wrap up of production for The Pacific, co-Executive Producer/Writer, Bruce C. McKenna exclaimed "What a surprise! I was just talking about your property to a reporter the other day.  We chose it because it had everything we needed – especially the expanse of beach.  It was close enough to town to get crews in and out, but far enough away that we weren’t going to keep the entire ‘coast’ up at night.  You were incredibly gracious for letting us construct what we needed and the production is deeply grateful."

Mr Pringle said his land had received further attention with Mount Mulligan currently being considered by a new international production company planning to film the history of far north Queensland’s gold rush. 

The miniseries tracks the intertwined real-life stories of three US Marines – Robert Leckie, John Basilone, and Eugene Sledge – across the vast canvas of the Pacific rim during World War 11.

The miniseries follows these men and their fellow marines from the first battle with the Japanese on Guadalcanal, through the rainforests of Cape Gloucester and the strongholds of Peleliu, across the bloody sands of Iwo Jima and through the horror of Okinawa, and finally to their triumphant but uneasy return home after V-Day.

The Pacific is based in part on the books "Helmet for My Pillow" by Robert Leckie and "With the Old Breed" by Eugene B. Sledge, with additional material from "Red Blood, Black Sand" by Chuck Tatum and “China Marine” by Eugene B. Sledge, as well as the original interviews by the filmmakers.

The Pacific has already started airing in the US to great acclaim, achieving in the vicinity of 9 million views for its first four episodes.