We ventured back towards Cairns today to travel through the rainforest to Kuranda. The rainforest canopy is vast and stunning, all the better seen through the glass bottom of our cable car - not for the faint hearted!
Kuranda is surrounded by world heritage rainforest 1000m above Cairns, the traditional home of the Djabugay people. The first Europeans settled here in 1885, later in the 60's the lifestyle prompted a hippy invasion (still very much in evidence)!
Upon arrival at Kuranda I was a tad disappointed, whilst very pretty and a living, working community it was tourist city. We headed straight for the Koala gardens getting in early to avoid the crowds, missing the numerous eateries and shops full of mostly junk.
We had a chance to cuddle a koala, cue Hazel our adorable cuddler - you have to make like a tree to allow them to wrap around you - too cute. Koalas are up there with my very favourite things, even Mr H was smitten! We also fed a few very friendly Kangaroos and saw huge lizards a wombat (ignored us) and other creatures including those who live in darkness - bit creepy and stinky!
Continuing our theme of avoiding people and shops we took a 3k walk through the rainforest via an undulating path, very cool & very steep in places.
From there we took a boat trip along the Baron River to the edge of the falls seeing river wildlife; freshwater crocodiles, turtles and fish. The falls were not in flood but still impressive at 256m high. At full capacity they can generate $1m (Aus) a day. Wet season is Dec-Mar, and produces enough water to run the generators at full capacity, in the dry season they restrict the flow to maintain the river level. The river is very pretty and peaceful, we arrived back just in time for G to have a tour of the Kuranda railway station signal box (spotter!). Time to catch our Train from Kuranda back to Smithfield just outside Cairns. We were in Gold glass, nice with an element of Fawlty Towers about it. The trip down is steep, slow and steady, the twists, turns and 15 tunnels all loosened with explosives the workers then using pick and shovels to clear it when building it. An engineering feat but not without significant loss of life due to dangerous working conditions.
After a long day we had a 50 minute drive back to Port Douglas, a quick bite to eat & a mellow evening! Kuranda is ok, the surrounding rainforest and Koalas are awesome, glad we did it once and did it the way we did - even in the tourist mayhem!