Every country has a 'backyard', a place where the locals like to lap up the sun and where tourists get a more authentic experience than they would in the better-known holiday resorts.
Places such as the tiny resort towns of Palm Cove and Port Douglas, in tropical north Queensland on Australia's northeast coast, offer this experience. Yes, you'll stray across incredulous Japanese tourists, sunburned Brits and the odd South Korean honeymooner, but there'll also be plenty of Aussies dressing down in flip flops and singlets and enjoying the off-peak solitude.
I arrive at Cairns Airport on a humid, murky Friday afternoon at the end of an Australian summer. Within a month, this whole region will be deluged as the monsoons dance past, keeping the coast lush and verdant. But today I'm willing the soot-coloured clouds on the horizon back out to sea, as the electric roof of our convertible hire car slides into 'end of summer' mode, to my companions' applause.
Driving is a big part of the whole north Queensland experience. The region is famous for its two World Heritage listings, the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest, but it's the long, relatively empty, palm-lined stretches of highway and tiny sun drenched layovers, which give access to the deserted and unspoilt beaches, that makes the region so good to see through the windshield. The Captain Cook Highway remains one of Australia's most beautiful routes, reaching north from the city of Cairns, through Palm Cove and Port Douglas to Mossman, at the cusp of the Daintree.
Putting the bulbous red Chrysler PT Cruiser, a car which just screams road trip, into gear, and with John Mayer blaring on the stereo, we cruise Cairns' neat but quiet streets.
It's a tropical town that is slowly coming of age; backpacker inns now sit next to fusion restaurants like the Red Ochre, which serves up smoked kangaroo encrusted with local macadamias, emu pate and crocodile wontons to intrepid tourists. The man-made lagoon is a point of civic pride for locals and in the late afternoon heat this oversized swimming pool, which overlooks Cairns' tidal harbour, is bustling with children.