Guests ask whether to avoid December to April, and staff tell them it depends on what they came for.
In the wet it rains hard in the afternoon, often for an hour and sometimes for a day. The rainforest behind the house turns a green that doesn't photograph well, and the town empties out, so rooms that are impossible to get in July can be had on a week's notice.
The wet also brings a stinger net to the beach, and when the wind gets up the outer reef sailings come off the board for days at a time. If the reef is your only reason for coming, the wet is a gamble in the ordinary sense of the word.
The house is at its best in the wet, because the verandahs were built for it. Sit on the upper one at four in the afternoon and watch the weather come across from the Mossman side; the fans needn't even be on.
The gaming room is busiest in the wet, since there is less to do outdoors after six. It opens Wednesday to Sunday, eighteen hundred to one, as it does all year.
The short answer is to come in the wet for the house and the town, and in the dry for the water.