Friday 11 September

Davvyd Brown, a one man Port Douglas promotion band

Local, artist, art teacher, photographer and keeper (and friend) of two of the most famous birds in Australia, Davvyd Brown is a Port Douglas legend in the making.   Of course, he is far too busy and far too modest to accept this accolade but this 'one man promotion band' does more for Port Douglas behind the scenes as well as at the very front line than almost anyone else in town.

He passes on his passion for art as a teacher down at his art studio in the Marina. He teaches both adults and children.   In fact one of his adult students, Carol Bennett just sold one of her pieces for $800.   And his younger students recently swept the board clean at the Mossman Show by winning first, second and third places in all the art categories they entered. And his own artworks are uniquely tropical, full of vibrant colour and texture.  

Editors Note: My wife was lucky enough to win one of his works of art which he had kindly donated to a charity fundraising event, we attended. She was thrilled at her success but all Davvyd said with genuine concern was, "If you don't like it, I'll paint you another" !  Needless to say we're very proud that the one we won is hanging in pride of place at our house and he can't have it back!

Another thing very few people would know is that whenever he visits other parts of Australia,which quite often, in his commissioned capacity as Artist and art teacher, he never lets an opportunity go by to promote the delights of Port Douglas, the place he now treasures as his own piece of paradise.

He has a passion for Port Douglas that borders on obsession but he happily explains that from his vast experience it's not only Paradise that starts with the letter P, it's Port Douglas as well and the whole world should know about it.

Now you may be thinking that everything mentioned so far is a pretty good payload for an unpaid ambassador but Davvyd seems to have a never ending source of energy so he tirelessly does the circuit of the restaurants and bars almost every evening with Nancy and Henry, the Cockathree (he's far too intelligent to just be a Cockatoo) taking photographs of the
tourists enjoying their meals. His birds are famous across Australia, if not the world. You may have seen the birds on the current Ergon Energy TV advert ?

Editors note: I've personally seen the excitement he generates, particularly with the children when he offers to take visitors photos with the birds at the various venues. And it's all free to the visitor. He simply emails the resulting holiday photo souvenir of them posing with his beautiful birds.

The result of this amazing attraction can be evidenced by the array of emails that we managed to extract from his computer from grateful holidaymakers.   We thought perhaps you'd like to see a random selection of four of them.  We would show you more from the hundreds he receives but in typical style he doesn't like to show off, so he deletes them !

• Thank you so much for sending the pictures of us with your birds. A lovely memento from our holiday in Port Douglas. We are back in Melbourne now and missing the beautiful weather we had in Port Douglas. It is very wet, cold and windy and we're waiting for a huge storm to hit tonight. Thanks again, Regards, Frances
• That's a lovely photo thank you so much for forwarding. Happy Days in Port!  Warm Regards Seide and Sophie, Sydney
• Hi Davvyd, WOW ! Thank you very much. The photos of the Courthouse Hotel are fantastic. We appreciate it very much. Will be putting our photos together to show family and friends soon and hopefully, next year, we will back in Port Douglas and will say hello to you. Regards, Deanna and Alan
• Thank you for sending through, our little girl loves this photo. Thanks Gayna

If medals were awarded for Port Douglas tourism promotion, Davvyd Brown would be wearing a whole chest full of them or maybe it would be a whole perch full of them, 'cos we don't think Henry would let him take all the credit !