by Mat Churchill

Tourism is a big part of The Newsport because it's a big part of everyone's lives here in the Port Douglas hinterland.

The current challenges we face are well documented, none more so than how we attract people to our area during the wet season (aka off-season, green season, green time, low season etc.).

Whether you take the time to make your thoughts known, or keep them to yourself, it seems everyone has an opinion on how things should be done. The marketing, the branding, the service, the product, the tourism bodies - it's open for discussion.

As a new fish to town it has been interesting to hear people's passionate opinions, so I figure I might as well have one too.

And here it is.

THE WET SEASON IS NOT EVIL!

I like rain. I'm a Victorian until someone tells me otherwise and I haven't seen any for a decade. I love hearing it on the roof, watching it as I sit in the pub with a XXXX Gold (am I a Queenslander yet?), and even getting out in amongst it strolling through the rainforest (I also like long walks on the beach and my favourite colour is blue).

Rain gets a bad wrap up here and I think people have convinced themselves that it's the party pooper that tells all of the tourists that it's late and time to go home.

I spent my first wet season living in Port Douglas last year. I went to the reef on water as smooth as glass (a much more common experience at that time of year from what I understand), and did a couple of Daintree tours in torrential rain that made me realise that was how a rainforest was meant to be.

I headed to the Bump Track and saw the Mowbray falls raging in the distance, and I hiked up to Spring Creek Falls to see them raging on top of me. All unique and memorable experiences.

Sure it's summer down south, but most of the world's population is well into their bone-chilling winters so where would they rather be? Sipping a cocktail in the tropics or sipping a cup of Bovril in Blackpool?

We can't swim freely in the ocean without the use of nets or a stinger suit, but every place here has a swimming pool so we're already ahead of 95% of the rest of the world.

To me it's how we choose to see our area. Maybe some people have been here so long that they've forgotten that this place offers so much even at it's wettest and most humid.

Or perhaps I need to keep my mouth shut until I get through my first cyclone!