We're an electric encyclopedia for travellers to Australia's Tropical North. Top places such as the Great Barrier Reef, Port Douglas, Cairns, the Daintree National Park, Mission Beach, Cooktown and Cape York.
At the other end of the cable hanging out of the back your computer is not just our data bank, but a tribe of busy locals, here on the edge of the Barrier Reef, organising your bookings as well as running around with digital cameras and laptops, keeping everything up-to-date. This site contains everything you wanted to know about the Reef coastline and weren't afraid to ask.
We are not nudists, but we're into the naked truth, so if you're thinking of visiting these parts you'll find all the reality you need to know in the many gigs of film and text behind this front page. We are a traveller’s guide, not just a brochure. We're also a travel agency, but we only sell those products we can see, feel and touch in our region.
With the world awash with holiday options, it's just physically impossible for your local travel agent to know what's available at your distant destination, apart from what's packaged into the glossy brochures. But on-line, we can take you via a video window through the foyer of every hotel in the region. On to every dive boat. We'll drive you through the rainforest and splash with you out on the Reef. At our end, it's more like a newsroom than a travel agency and in our toy box we have lots of digital cameras, a fleet of well worn research cars, dirt bikes for the remote stuff and a 50 ft yacht for the ocean research stuff. Oh, and an orchard of Apple Macs to pull it all together.
For a bit of fun we also broadcast our local radio station, Trip FM, on-line. We were sick of changing our five stack CD player all day, so we computerised it into Trip Music and if you dig the tunes while lying on the beach here, you can log on and listen to it back in your own city whilst you're doing your spread sheets.
We're into travel, music, fun and hospitality. Dig into us. It'll take you weeks to see it all, it took us years. This is not your usual site. It's big. It's fun. It's a window into our gorgeous, home turf.
What's it like?
It's green. It's warm. It's on the edge of the worlds' biggest Coral Reef and not only populated by Australians. Until a few years back, it was home to laidback cane farmers and reef fishermen. Now there's the odd international hotel amongst the palm trees and a sort of cappuccino meets plastic thong society. Most things we cover are within a day’s drive of Cairns. It's the best bit of Australia by far and everything described within it is easily accessible to visitors whom we welcome through our site DestinationEx. You won't leave home without one.
Who the hell is DestinationEX?
Being a cyber travel host is fun. First and foremost, we are travellers. The fact that we ended up living here in a village in North Queensland, says something. For all our years on the road, it seems if we can return the hospitality we've enjoyed ourselves, it's easier to do it where it's seaside, it's sweet and it's tropical. That's here.
The DestinationEX team comprises journalists, photographers, videoographers who research and update the site, along with managers and accountants who allow you to pre-book through the site. It's a fun mix.
We don't promote advertising or advertorial content in our reviews. We feel that if we're are paid to say we love something and we don't, we have a credibility problem. We do have a cyber shopping arcade on the way with no-holds-barred advertising, but it's a separate shop. On-line, we maintain a core of creatives, but we also employ local travel agents who are busy securing travel arrangements for our inbound clients.
We’re an academic bunch, and much to our amazement, our gang has degrees in tourism and marketing, all sorts of weird computer degrees, marine biology, film and television, construction and development, accounting and fine arts. We're also looking for a rocket scientist for our interplanetary guide to the hot spots of Uranus.
A disproportionate percentage of our team are musicians. And DJs. And film makers. And painters. Put it this way, walk into our workshop and walk into an eccentric world of Krishna meets Bill Gates, where CD players wore out so fast, we had to build our own radio station.
So DestinationEX is an odd lot, we love our life, our art, our fun and our adventure, but we believe in getting it together, (after our first coffee, anyway!) We're not billionaires but we own Aus $6,000,000 or $7,000,000 in property (along with the bank) as a foundation for our more energetic businesses. We dabble in hotel management but with only a very upmarket lodge which we self-righteously deem the most fantastic lodge on earth.
Within our ranks we have a core partnership known as Tripnology. If you want a site built as real as this one, Tripnology is the gang that'll give it to you. We live in the sleepy tropics so Porches aren't big on our agenda, and we charge accordingly.
Also within our ranks is Trip Music, the solution to our broken CD player. Given time, Trip Music will move into the MP3 sale of music when encripted copyright distinguishes piracy from the long term players. For now it's a channel of electric koolade chill. Try it. You'll like it.
Technically
DestinationEX address of our retail outfit:
9/9 Craven Close, Port Douglas.
Phone: (country code) 61 for Australia, 07 4099 4434 or fax 07 4099 4071.
When you arrive, please drop in and see us. From the street, we look part internet cafe, part reception centre and part travel agency, but all styled in a mix of Bill Gates turned Buddhist monk.
