Ellis Beach
Slender five-kilometre stretch of coast with a tiny caravan park, stinger nets, and pumice-strewn sand.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Ellis Beach, a slender stretch of coast between Cairns and Port Douglas in far north Queensland, follows the family who have run its small holiday park since the mid-nineteen-nineties against a strange fact: the locality's official population has collapsed toward almost nobody. It also touches the isolated Captain Cook Highway, which first opened this coast in the nineteen thirties, and the fate of the once-glamorous Double Island resort just offshore. Best heard standing at the waterline, counting how few lights show along the shore behind you.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Four Mile Beach
Golden crescent of sand once worked by prawn boats, now backed by palms and resorts.
Trinity Beach
Netted swimming enclosure on a quiet shore, among the first stinger barriers built on this coast.
Palm Cove
Palm-fringed beach cove shaped by a settler's century-old road and a homestead swallowed by a resort.
Rex Lookout
Clifftop pull-off above the Coral Sea, named for the councillor who championed the coast road below.
Captain Cook Highway
Winding coastal route linking beaches and rainforest-backed headlands north toward Port Douglas.
Cairns Museum
Heritage-listed nineteen-oh-seven building holding community stories of tropical coastal life.