Gold Coast or Port Douglas?

The Gold Coast has much the stronger beaches. Golden sand runs almost without a break from Main Beach to Coolangatta, with flagged, patrolled areas at intervals along the coast, and you can choose between wide Surfers Paradise, grassy Burleigh and sheltered point beaches such as Rainbow Bay. You can swim in any month, but this is open surf, so stay between the flags and watch for rips.

Four Mile Beach at Port Douglas is lovely to walk along and lie on, and its water is warmer. But the sea is often milky, and from about November to May stingers keep swimmers inside a small netted enclosure. In Port Douglas the beach is mainly a dry-season pleasure, while the Gold Coast's beaches work all year.

Neither place is worth travelling to for the food, but the Gold Coast has more range. Burleigh Heads and Mermaid Beach have brunch cafés and modern Australian dining, Broadbeach has a dense run of restaurants, and there are craft brewery taprooms and twilight food markets. Port Douglas keeps most of its eating to Macrossan Street and the marina. It is good for a long outdoor dinner of reef fish or mud crab and for tropical fruit at breakfast, but on a stay of more than a week the menus start to repeat.

Neither is a place for sightseeing, and both send visitors elsewhere for museums. What they do have is different in kind. The Gold Coast offers a modern gallery of Australian art at HOTA and the view along the coast from SkyPoint, and Brisbane's museums are a train ride away.

Port Douglas has two small historic buildings, the old Court House and the seaside chapel of St Mary's. Its most rewarding cultural experience is a walk at Mossman Gorge led by Kuku Yalanji guides, who explain the rainforest as their country.

The Gold Coast offers a real night out and Port Douglas does not. Cavill and Orchid Avenues in Surfers Paradise are a loud party strip with clubs that run into the small hours. For something quieter there are the wine bars of Broadbeach and the rooftops and taprooms of Burleigh.

In Port Douglas an evening means dinner and a drink at a pub or bar terrace on Macrossan Street, perhaps with a cover band, then an early night before the reef boat leaves. Anyone who wants a club has to drive an hour to Cairns.

Both have outstanding nature, but Port Douglas has the rarer mix. Boats from its marina reach the outer Great Barrier Reef in about ninety minutes, and Mossman Gorge is twenty minutes away. Beyond it, the Daintree River and Cape Tribulation offer ancient forest, cassowaries and crocodiles.

The Gold Coast has its own World Heritage rainforest at Springbrook and Lamington, an hour or more inland, and famous surf breaks at Snapper Rocks and Kirra. Humpback whales also pass offshore in winter and spring. It is superb for surfers and walkers, but it has no coral reef.

The Gold Coast has more places to go for a day. Brisbane's riverside galleries and South Bank are a train ride away, Byron Bay is just over the border, and Tamborine Mountain combines a village with small wineries. From Port Douglas most outings head into the reef or the rainforest. Cairns, Kuranda and the Atherton Tablelands are the main days out to towns, and each means an hour or more on the road.

The Gold Coast is built around family vacations. It has Dreamworld, Movie World, Sea World and two water parks, koalas at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, and calm creek mouths for small swimmers. Port Douglas suits families who want a quieter week, with the Wildlife Habitat, a gentle reef day at Low Isles and the boardwalks at Mossman Gorge.

The tropics limit what Port Douglas can offer children. Summer swimming is only inside the nets, there are crocodile warnings along every creek, and the boat rides to the outer reef are long. Beyond the wildlife park, little is made with children in mind.

In both places you can walk around the centre, and in both you need a car for the rainforest. The difference is one of scale. The Gold Coast is a long, thin city held together by the G:link light rail from Southport to Broadbeach, with buses running on to Coolangatta and a train connection to Brisbane.

Port Douglas is a small, flat town where walking and cycling cover most needs, and tours pick you up from your hotel. The only real journey is the transfer of about an hour from Cairns airport.

The Gold Coast has more to buy, though little of it is special. There is the big open-air Pacific Fair centre, discount outlets at Harbour Town, surfwear everywhere and a large weekend market at Carrara. Port Douglas offers a short browse along Macrossan Street, with resort-wear boutiques, South Sea pearl jewellery and galleries of Aboriginal art, plus the Sunday market in Anzac Park. It is more charming but far smaller.

A week on the Gold Coast costs noticeably less than one in Port Douglas, even if Australian prices mean neither is cheap. The huge supply of vacation apartments keeps rooms reasonable outside school breaks, self-catering is easy, and the beaches and national parks are free. Theme-park tickets are where a family's spending climbs.

Port Douglas leans towards upmarket resorts, and the reef trips and rainforest tours that are the reason for going are all paid excursions. Self-catering and the cheaper rates of the wet season help, but a traveller on a tight budget will feel the cost every day.

HOTA, the arts centre on the Nerang River, gives the Gold Coast a proper home for the stage. Its theatres and outdoor stage host touring shows, comedy and concerts, and there are bands in pubs and surf clubs and festival weekends such as Blues on Broadbeach. For opera or an orchestra, Brisbane is about an hour and a quarter away by train.

Port Douglas has no theatre or concert venue at all. Music means a cover band on a bar terrace or the outdoor shows of the yearly carnival, and for anything more formal you have to go to Cairns.

Port Douglas is the more restful of the two. The whole town keeps an unhurried pace, the resort spas use native botanicals, and you can spend much of the day beside a lagoon pool under the palms.

The Gold Coast can be calm too, but you have to pick your spot. The southern suburbs around Burleigh and Coolangatta suit a slow stay, and there are hinterland retreats at Tamborine Mountain and in Currumbin Valley. Noisy Surfers Paradise is not a place to rest.