Why this tiny town on the edge of Australia has our hearts

My partner and I first stayed in Port Douglas in Far North Queensland one steamy December in a bleak caravan park, sleeping in a concrete bunker with no air-conditioning and a tiny window that blew in hot air.

The humidity sat on us like a weighted blanket. It dampened and plastered our hair to our foreheads. We sought relief in the ocean, only to find it was like wading into a tepid bath. The only beer we could find was XXXX and as a vegetarian, requesting a chicken parmigiana and chips without the chicken was often my only dinner option.

But despite the oppressive heat, the lukewarm ocean and limited dining options, we loved it. It felt like a proper holiday – languid, lazy and punctuated with palm trees.

We returned three years later in 2011 for a babymoon, upgrading to a Mediterranean-style apartment on the main street. We walked early in the golden light along Four Mile Beach, nodding hello to everyone we passed. No matter how far we walked, the sand and the ocean seemed to stretch forever.

Mornings were spent browsing and reading at a small bookshop cafe, afternoons in the pool, evenings at the marina, watching snorkellers and divers return from a day on the reef, sun-flushed and bursting with stories about the creatures they’d seen.

We usually finished at an ice-creamery in town. The same blonde woman was always behind the counter.

One evening, as she scooped our cones, she told us she’d moved from Newcastle after her husband had died tragically and unexpectedly. “I asked myself what I could do where I’d be around happy people all day,” she said. Her answer? Buy an ice-cream shop in Port Douglas.

When I got home, my belly swelling with my first child, I thought about her often. About how tenuous life could be and how for her, Port Douglas was not escapism. It gave her proximity to other people’s happiness in the hope that she might find some of her own again.

My own happiness became increasingly dependent on the promise of an annual Port Douglas trip, a guarantee of defrosting after a long, bitter winter in regional Victoria.

Every year, we’ve migrated north for a week or two, where we’ve gone out on the reef, drifting above coral as the sea shifts beneath us. We’ve joined Dreamtime tours in the Daintree rainforest, listening to ancient stories, their roots reaching deep into country. We’ve river snorkelled, cheered at cane toad races, stared into the cold eyes of enormous crocs at Hartley’s, and driven through the nearby Atherton Tablelands with its cool fresh air and greenery that wraps around the winding roads.

Now our annual trip to Port Douglas has become a multi-generational pilgrimage, with my parents, my two siblings and their kids joining us. My 80-something dad can be found in the pool under a scrum of grandkids launching themselves off his shoulders, perfecting their classic catches. Each morning the kids wait for my mum to latch open the door to their ground-floor apartment, a signal that the day can properly begin.

We know to get to the Sunday market early for Duke’s Doughnuts, before the line snakes too far. We buy fresh prawns and sweet pineapples and the kids queue for bicycle-pressed sugar cane juice, green and grassy and sticky on their hands. We drift to Hemingway’s for craft beer, to Bam Pow for punchy Asian plant-based dishes and to the beach before the heat settles in.

The ice-cream shop looks much the same, though the woman who once scooped our cones is gone. There’s a defibrillator on the wall with a little plaque in memory of her husband. We go to a different ice-creamery now and the children take turns choosing flavours to carry home for my parents. Does Grandma want boysenberry again or would she prefer strawberry? The kids hurry with the melting offerings, padding down the footpath to our apartment.

Last year the six grandchildren – aged seven to 14 – created a feature film. Most of it was shot in the stairwells and carpark of our apartment block, which doubled as secret headquarters and escape routes. They disappeared for hours, emerging only for food and to cool off in the pool.

This is what keeps us returning to Port Douglas – it’s the way this tiny town on the edge of Australia has accommodated every version of our family. The backpacking couple in a sweltering bunker. The expectant parents walking together on the beach at dawn. The middle-aged siblings corralling children through markets. The grandfather bracing himself in the pool as small bodies leap off him.

We said we’d stop going to Port Douglas when we ran out of things to do, but we haven’t yet. I’m not sure we will.