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Port Douglas, Queensland

Having been in Sydney for a month and a half, I felt the need to take a quick vacation and strap the backpack on to recharge. With Cairns being a quick 3 hour flight, filled with lush nature, incredible animals and hopefully amazing people, I felt it was the perfect place to take a vacation from my job search and appease my adventurous side.

Meticulously planning my route, I booked in my accommodation to take advantage of the free shuttles all the hostels offer. This meant a quick night in Cairns, four nights in Port Douglas, and then back to Cairns for my flight home.

Lots to see and do, and so little time!

My first night in Cairns can be summed up in two words: jelly wrestling. While I thought I had seen it all during my time at Western University, apparently Gilligan’s Hostel takes it up to a whole other level. Reminiscent of the movie Old School, the club/hostel has crazy party themed activities each night. While it’s not something I’d like to see my hypothetical daughter involved in, watching people wrestle in an inflatable pool full of jelly was a new one for the books, and fun for all involved.

While the hostel was thankfully cheap, the club atmosphere isn’t much my scene. I happily hopped on the shuttle the morning after to get myself to Port Douglas, famous for access to the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest – two incredible UNESCO world heritage sites.

While the nature is astounding in all of Port Douglas’ surrounding areas, what I’m most excited about is something my parents told me about when they visited Australia years ago: cane toad racing.

It might not be a world heritage site, but Port Douglas’ IronBar is famous for racing cane toads. Although I had no idea what that entailed, I knew I had to check it out. And I needed to recruit some people to come with me.

As I walked into the Port Douglas Backpacker’s hostel, everyone I met seemed to be in a great mood, whether they were soaking in the sun and floating away in pool toys, or hanging out by the bar.

The change from ‘club hotel’ to ‘inviting home’ made it easy to say hello to passersby, and so I quickly started up a conversation with some of my roommates.

Enter Nadia and Kaori. Nadia’s from the US, having lived in Prague and Dublin for a few years, running around Australia as an Au Pair based in Sydney. Kaori (and her best friend Shu who I later met) is from Perth, currently living in Melbourne and loving life.

After talking through the usual backpacker banter and me making fun of Nadia for bringing workout equipment in her luggage, we establish that we should all be friends. As a result, we make a plan for the four of us to drive up to the rainforest the next day and see if we can spot any cassowaries (giant blue emu-like birds).

Much more importantly, we also excitedly make plans to check out the cane toad racing that evening.

Cane Toad Racing

After a quick dinner and figuring out where the night’s entertainment was located, we made our way to IronBar for the nightly 8:00pm race. Sadly, as soon as we arrive we’re told that the event is sold out and we’ll have to try another night.

Dejected, we walk a few steps and huddle to determine a plan to sneak into the bar and see the race. While scheming, the hostess walks over and tells us it’s our lucky night – four tickets just became available!

Walking into the bar and paying the $5 entry, I’m surprised to see an audience that ranges from toddlers doing circles around their mothers to gruff looking men putting back shots of what I can only assume is vodka mixed with motor oil. I understand that it’s an animal race, but bringing your 4 year old to a bar?

Interesting call.

Soon after arriving, the host of the race shows up. Apparently cane toads are incredibly invasive and a major issue as a non-native animal. Someone brought a few to the country to control the cane beetle population, which would be fine…except that the toads don’t eat the Australian beetles. As well, the native wildlife starting eating the poisonous toads which proves to be an issue for domestic cats and dogs.

What started as a few dozen toads has quickly become a major issue, as more than a billion toads are estimated to be hopping around down under.

Anyways, the rationale behind the racing was if you can’t control the cane toad population, you might as well do your part and race them.

After getting the rundown on the event from the MC, he began calling out numbers (found on our tickets) to see who’s up to be a toad racer.

I jokingly nudge Shu (who doesn’t have a particular affection towards slimy toads) that she’s going to get called. What do you know, 5 seconds later and she’s not a happy lady.

Up on the stage, each contestant is assigned a toad (they have names like Jerry Springer and Skippy’s Love Child) and is made to pick up and kiss their new amphibious friend. After hearing about how poisonous the toads are, a child on the stage who looks no older than 6 begins to cry that he has to kiss Camel Toad.

Sketchy? Yes. Hilarious? Absolutely.

When it comes to be Shu’s turn, she’s not happy. As the host insists she didn’t kiss her slimy friend the first time, she puckers up for round two as the hundred-person audience howls with laughter. However, she does it and I cheer my new friend on her new lover.

As the toads are all placed in a box in the middle of a table, the next minute are some of the most exciting seconds I’ve had in my life.

As the box is lifted, each racer is given a party blower to make noise and encourage/push the toad to jump off the table into a bucket. There are toads jumping into the audience, children are crying, some toads don’t seem fazed or willing to move at all.

Incredible.

Finally, one by one the toads end up in the bucket, with first and second place being given a prize. There’s a 6 year old who excitedly holds up the bottle of wine he won, and runs to his dad to ask if he can drink it.

Sadly Shu didn’t even come close to winning with her toad Fat Bastard, we were cheering on her look of disgust the entire time. There’s no one I would rather have put up on the stage.

After the race, there’s a second race with a toad auction. The auction has people bid upwards of $100 to get their chance to race a toad and win a mediocre bottle of wine. It’s mostly kids begging their parents (which is why they love kids at the event), and ensuing is another round of ridiculousness.

People laughing, children screaming, and toads flying everywhere. It was a phenomenal evening that I’ll never forget.

While I don’t think PETA is giving IronBar a gold star anytime soon, if you can get past some questionable animal (pest) rights for a night, then this is not an activity to be missed.