Don't know if you're back from your trip yet, donnap, but in case you are still planning it, and for the sake of others, I can strongly recommend staying in Port Douglas. We had 5 nights there and could have done with another one, as we didn't get up to Daintree [our own fault, poor planning] though we did see Mossman gorge in a tropical storm which was fun.

we only drove through Cairns on our way back to the airport but from what I saw of it, I'm not sorry we didn't stay there.

I'll be posting the PD part of my trip report soon so I'll post a link here when it's done.