Above It All: Hot Air Balloon Port Douglas in Port Douglas Magazine

Every now and then a piece of writing comes along that captures, far better than any brochure could, why we love what we do. Port Douglas Magazine recently ran a feature on the aerial wonders of Far North Queensland, and tucked among the helicopters, skydivers and paragliders was a hot air balloon drifting over the Atherton Tablelands - a quiet moment that felt very close to home.

A Feature Worth Sharing

The article, "Above It All - The Heights of Paradise", was written by Maura Mancini and published in the digital edition of Port Douglas Magazine, in partnership with Newsport. It is a love letter to seeing this region from above, and we were proud to find one of our balloons woven through it. Rather than reprint the piece, we wanted to share what struck us about it, point you toward the original, and add a little of our own view from the basket.

A Region Best Seen From Above

Mancini's central idea is one we think about every morning we fly. From the ground, Far North Queensland reads as a string of separate attractions: the reef here, the rainforest there, a river somewhere in between. Lift it off the ground, though, and the whole thing reorganises itself into a single connected system - reef feeding into river feeding into coastline, each element shaping the next. It is a perspective that rearranges what you think you already know about a place, and it is precisely what our passengers find waiting for them once the balloon lifts off into another brand new day.

The Balloon in the Story

The passage closest to our hearts unfolds out near Mareeba, on the Atherton Tablelands. Mancini describes a still winter morning when a large balloon appears overhead almost without warning. There is the sudden roar of the burner, sharp and unfamiliar against the quiet, and then silence again as the envelope drifts on. To someone watching from below, she writes, the balloon seems to follow no clear logic at all - something so large should not be able to move so lightly.

"For a moment, it slows everything around it." Maura Mancini, "Above It All", Port Douglas Magazine

We could not have put it better. That stillness - the sense that the ordinary pace of the morning has quietly paused - is the part our passengers most often reach for words to describe afterwards, and rarely find.

From the Basket

Mancini watches the balloon from the ground. From inside it, the same morning feels different again. The burner warms the back of your neck, the patchwork of the Atherton Tablelands opens out beneath you in paddocks, dams, ribbons of road and the dark line of distant rainforest, and the balloon travels with the air rather than against it - so for long stretches the loudest sound is the birdlife below. The early mornings up here are reliably calm and clear, which is a large part of why this corner of the country has become such a rewarding place to fly.

Read the Full Feature

We would encourage you to read "Above It All - The Heights of Paradise" in full. It is a beautiful piece of writing about a part of the world we are fortunate to call our flying ground, and we are grateful a balloon found its way into it. You can find the original in the digital edition of Port Douglas Magazine.

"Above It All - The Heights of Paradise" was written by Maura Mancini and first published in Port Douglas Magazine (issue 47), in partnership with Newsport. The quoted passage remains the property of its author and publisher. Read the original feature here.