The famous Poppy Dan street sweeper is missing in action.

That, combined with the middle of the dry season, has resulted in Port Douglas’ main drag taking on a copper-tone hue as the deciduous Indian almond trees drop their leaves on Macrossan Street.

A call placed to Cairns Regional Council on Monday by a loyal The Newsport reader found that the street sweeper was out of action, with council waiting on a part to fix the $320,000 Rosmech Merlin Scarab Road Sweeper and get it back on its early-morning daily sweep of the streets of Port Douglas.

Council reportedly advised that one may be coming in from Cairns in the coming days to pick up the slack, after our reader was told that Council staff were not available to use brooms and shovels to clean up the mess (which is now happening with Cairns Works staff on the job this morning).

Cairns Regional Council division 10 councillor, Julia Leu, said a replacement may need to be contracted in order to keep the streets of the tourist town tidy.

“There is a schedule of daily street sweeping that needs to be adhered to,” Cr Leu said. “It is important that Macrossan Street is maintained to a high level for tourism.

“It took a long time to get Poppy Dan, so we need to get it up and running again, but in the meantime, we need to see what alternatives are available.”

The Indian almond tree (Terminalia catappa) is a large, tropical tree, naturalised in a broad belt extending from Africa to Northern Australia and New Guinea through Southeast Asia and Micronesia into the Indian Subcontinent.

They have been known to grow to 35 metres (115 ft) tall, with its almond-like nut and its large, leathery leaves turning a pinkish-reddish or yellow-brown (due to pigments such as violaxanthin, lutein, and zeaxanthin) before dropping in the dry season.

As annoying as they can be when littering our surrounds this time of year, the leaves do have a positive attribute.

They contain the flavanoid, quercetin, which has more recently been used in natural medicine and shows to possess anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-cancer and anti-diarrhoeal properties.

However, we wouldn’t recommend anyone munching on a bunch of the leaves for their health benefits. Better to wait until Poppy Dan is back in action so it can munch them up for us.