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Hi all, the blog backdating is continuing! This is an account of our time in Cairns and the surrounding area in Queensland, at the start of our journey down Australia's East Coast...
Arriving into Cairns, first impressions were good. Nice sunset views, and heat that actually hot without the sauna-like Thai humidity! We checked into a pre-booked hostel called Serpents which was a little way out of the city centre (they compensated this with a decidedly erratic shuttle bus service - see below) but seemed nice. It had a very student vibe: cheap meal deals, bar activities and warren like floors crammed with impersonal dorms. Cairns as a place had a really nice atmosphere. A half hour stroll along the balmy seafront esplanade (for the Welshies reading, it was a real Mumbles -> Swansea replica!) took you into the city's heart. The town beach was nothing to write home about, but directly behind it lay a man-made lagoon/town beach where families congregated around the open-air BBQ stands and backpackers lounged on the grass. The marines were also in town whilst we were there. They could be found charging around the lagoon, bellowing out chants and being chased along by Pied Piper crowds of Ozzie infants, and later in the day making full use of their uniforms' pulling power on nights out on the town. Speaking of Cairns' nightlife, or at least what we saw of it, it was a real cattle market of drunken backpackers, stumbling around whatever bars had the best offer of the night. We spent one fun night at Rhino Bar, whose promotion of choice was unlimited spirits for $6 between 10 and 11pm. Meticulous clock-watching and our own backpacker tightness combined to ensure that we made it up to the bar approximately six shameful times within the hour. Besides wandering around its American block-like shopping streets or indulging in a spot of lagoon-lazing, Cairns itself had little to offer in the way of things to do, so - as would become tradition for us in Australia - we hit the day trips hard...
Our first jaunt out of Cairns took us to the small town of Kuranda. Unremarkable as a place, it is the journey to Kuranda that makes it worthwhile. At the town of Smithfield, you board the Skyrail, which heaves you up over increasingly dense jungled mountain ranges towards the village. To minimise damage to the jungle it swoops over, the massive Skyrail towers that support the suspended carriage pods, were lowered in by helicopter! It stopped off at several jungle walkways along the way, allowing us to check out some neat jungle fauna and waterfalls. Arriving into Kuranda, we transferred to the Scenic Railway for the journey back down into Cairns. Originally built in the nineteenth century by miners tranporting precious metals and stones, and themselves back down to the port at Cairns, it cut a leisurely winding road back through the mountains. Cue more scenic vistas.
A second day trip was the compulsory journey out to the Great Barrier Reef. We zoomed out to three separate locations on the Outer Reef (quieter, better visibility) on former racing yacht the Silverswift. The journey was an experience in itself. It was a windy day, and choppy seas combined with me not feeling great to produce some stomach churning seasickness. Unfortunately a New Zealand woman next to me had the same problem - luckily neither of us vommed. The journey home was reliably sponsored by the on-board seasickness tablets (which, it should be noted, Sarah wisely took on the journey out). We were the snorkelling contingent of the crowd on the boat, and at each site, we all plopped off the back of Silverswift and explored the Reef beneath us. Each site was an impressive underwater garden of competing corals and technicolour fishes, but the third and final site won hands down after we sighted a sea turtle AND a baby White Tipped shark! In between snorkels, we shivered our way back onto the boat and were plied with tea/coffee, cake and a hefty buffet lunch. Can't complain.
Maybe the best trip we made out of Cairns was hiring a car and driving north up the stunning Captain Cook Highway to Cape Tribulation. The road wound its way around the coastal curves, providing stunning views of the picture perfect beaches on one side and then forested cliffs on the other. Our first stop, an hour north of Cairns, was Port Douglas. A sheltered tourist town, Douglas a real hotch-potch of holiday apartments and mid-market (the bracket above us!) bars and bistros. We spent a pleasant few hours mozying around before relaxing on its main attraction, Four Mile Beach (does what it says on the tin). In a weird twist of fate, we bumped into an old friend of mine from home - lovely Becky Merry - who happened to be staying there for a week, and also happened to be on the beach, on the same afternoon we happened to be passing through. Too weird. Driving onwards from Port Douglas, we veered inland and passed some spectacular mountains before making a ferry crossing up into the wilderness of the Daintree Rainforest and National Park. After eventually reaching Cape Trib (a loose term for a tiny cluster of shops, hostels and beaches all enclosed by rainforest canopies) we stopped for the night at PK's Jungle Village. The next day we began a lazy journey back to Cairns, stopping off at numerous beaches, rainforest boardwalks, factoring in ice cream pistops and taking care to slow down to avoid smooshing the (turkey-like) Cassowaries which occasionally venture out from the gloom to meet their sixty kilometre per hour doom. Some Australian graffitist had even cleverly altered the speedbump signs to resemble prone roadkill cassowaries, giving us a good laugh on the long trawl home...
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