Dear everyone,
I forgot to mention that our tour guide for Aboriginal uses
of Australian plants at the Botanic gardens brought a bunch of different
vegetable treats to try, including wild plum jam and lilly pilly berries,
which were quite good.
Our next stop was Cairns.
Even Australians are not sure how to pronounce the name of this resort
town. Is it Cairns, Cains, Cannes? It usually sounded like Cains. We almost lost a day getting there - - We
woke up early our last morning of Sydney to get to the airport, and Cindy found
to her consternation that the flight, on Jetstar, had been cancelled due to a
mechanical problem. The alternative
offered to us entailed a long layover in Brisbane and didn’t arrive until
midnight! She took the rebooking, but
then we found a flight on Virgin Australia that got us in late afternoon. Later, we talked to some Aussies who said
that Jetstar is known for that type of thing, and since they code share with
Quantas it can be tricky to avoid problems if you must arrive on time.
In any case, we did get there eventually at some expense (Jetstar
will not reimburse us, instead giving us a non-transferable credit…). Cairns is a flat town without a beach; the
city has constructed a large flat pool for toddlers, alongside an esplanade. A large breakwater surrounds the water edge
of town; otherwise the coast is full of marinas. The town itself is full of massage joints,
tattoo parlors, and barber shops along with eateries and hotels. We are staying at an apartment hotel (each
unit sports a small living space, kitchenette and laundry facilities) across
the street from the police station, a block or two north of the center of
town. Sadly, we get in too late to see
the big fruit market, Rusty’s, which is a block northwest of us, and it is not open again until after we leave
After putting our luggage away, we walk to the seaside,
where I see shore birds including pelicans, avocets, sandpipers, spurwing
plovers (masked lapwings), and Welcome swallows. We walk through the night market, which is
full of gimcrack to buy, and small food stalls, but end up eating at an Italian
restaurant near the boardwalk.
Cairns 2
We woke up early this morning to get picked up for our Great
Barrier Reef adventure. A small van picks up us and some other tourists at
other nearby hotels, and drives us to the marina, where we board a large diesel
catamaran. There are around 40 tourists
on the boat. The temperature is in the
upper 70s with some small squalls, and it is a bit windy; but we are happy for
sun, as it has been an especially rainy few weeks for this supposed dry season.
The people on the boat distribute egg & biscuit sandwiches, and then we are
on our way. The water is a bit rough -
-no one is sitting outside, and I’m wondering if I should regret having eaten. Meanwhile, the crew gives us a short boat
capsizing lecture, and then their scuba team goes over how to use scuba
equipment. I wouldn’t want to be a first
time diver on this boat - - it’s hard to hear the instructor in the first
place, and life threatening things can happen when you dive, and the
instructors seem pretty cavalier on their teaching. I suppose if you are doing this daily, you
are aware of the potential disasters.
Then there is a talk by the ‘naturalist’ a young Belgian woman who I found
out later has a couple of master’s degrees.
She seems to be a coral expert.
She gives a talk on the animals of the reef, but her microphone keeps
cutting off. Also, the video presentation apparatus is broken, so she is
showing photographs on 8 x 11 paper. It’s
a good thing we are sitting near the front, but overall not satisfactory.
We actually have some passengers who are staying overnight
on the reef, so our boat stops alongside a bigger vessel to transfer people
over (we stop aside them on our return to pick up the previous days
tourists). Most of the people who get
off here are scuba certified divers. We
motor along another 10 minutes or so and then drop anchor, total time about one
hour.
We don wet suits, snorkel and masks, and swim fins, and jump
in the water. I’m glad of the wet suit,
the water is not super warm, and I don’t need to put on significant sun
protection. We all snorkel around for an
hour or so while the scuba divers do their thing. The water is a little rough, and this portion
of the reef is not that close to the surface.
I see parrot fish, coral, and some schools of other fish. Cheryl says she spotted a small white tipped
shark. I don’t see any evidence of bleaching, of course, it’s doubtful that a
tourist boat would bring us to a damaged portion of the reef.
We come aboard for lunch.
I remember several kinds of melon, and some kind of chicken dish, a
couple of salads but I eat pretty sparingly.
The boat moves off to another site perhaps a half kilometer away. The tide is going out now, and so there are
portions of the reef that are actually too close to the surface to swim near,
and the lifeguards keep calling people off of the reef. The first dive spot was better. The water is a bit calmer now, so they
release a small glass-bottom boat, and I take a tour around in this. The glass is scratched and a bit dirty, and
the awning doesn’t shade the bottom of the boat that well, so there is a lot of
reflection on the glass. Still, I am
able to take a few photographs.
I have to say that I think the scuba and snorkeling I have
done at Cancun/Cozumel was a better experience. Cindy got stung by some
creature (a jellyfish) on one of her fingers, and it is painful and swollen for
a couple of days. We come back to Cairns harbor, passing a beautiful rainbow on
the way (there are still small storms brewing up here and there). We eat at an excellent Korean restaurant
around the corner from our apartment.
Cairns 3
We wake up early again for our 7 am pickup to go on a trip
to Mossman Gorge, the Daintree River, and Cape Tribulation. We are met by one 20 passenger minibus. The tour was supposed to be two groups of
8-10 people, but one of the drivers called in sick (this driver apparently has
a habit of absence), and we all have to go in one vehicle. Mario, our driver is very nice, and has a
good speaking voice, but unfortunately, we are the first group to be picked up,
and the last to leave at the end of the day, which makes this a 13 hour day,
and we are all hungry and grumpy by the time we got back.
Cairns has
a fixed population of about 150,000 and on any given day an additional 10,000
tourists. It was founded as a depot for
gold mines that were in the tableland on the
other side of the surrounding coastal mountains. Since then it has become a
major depot for the sugar trade, and was an important base of Pacific
operations in WW2.
We drive past hectares of sugar cane. It is flowering on top, which means it is
time for the harvest. This has been delayed by all the rain in recent weeks. Apparently,
it was Australians who developed a mechanical sugar cane
harvester; otherwise it is a dangerous and dirty job to cut the cane by
hand. Australia produces about 5% of the world’s sugar (Brazil and India
produce about 60%). Other big agricultural
uses in this area include bananas and beef cattle. They used to have dairy cattle, but it is too
warm for good production. There is also
a big problem with cane toads, which were stupidly brought in to control
vermin. The toads are fecund, aggressive and poisonous, and have become, along
with rabbits, a poster child of environmental manipulation gone wrong.
We continue to drive north along the Cook Highway (named
after James Cook, as are
many things in Australia), in the fields nearby are a troop of wild wallabies. I
also spot magpie geese and Australian Ospreys (I think later in the day I may also have seen a white bellied sea eagle). After about 75 minutes of
driving we pick up our last couple in Port Douglas, a celebrity
tourist town with a nice beach, and then drive onto the Mossman Gorge
The Mossman Gorge
is at the southern edge of the Daintree rain forest. We have a mid-morning tea
in their cultural center that features scones, jam, and clotted cream, and then
get on a bus that takes us a kilometer away to the trailhead. The first loop of
the trail is along a well-kept metal walkway, and it takes you into the
rainforest, up to see some waterfalls, and to a spot where you can dip your
toes into the water (swimming is not recommended). There is a secondary loop of forest trail at
the top of the first loop, and Cindy, Cheryl and I walk along this on our own
for about 20 minutes before turning back - - our time at the gorge has been
shortened by the fact that we had to pick up all the extra people. Mario explains some of the plant and animal
life, but with a group of twenty it is too hard to keep up and hear him. The forest is beautiful, and it doesn’t rain
too much, but it’s cloudy enough that the big blue butterflies are not flying
about.
We get back into the bus, head back to the visitor center,
transfer into our vehicle, and then drive up to a special lunch where we get to
sample many tropical fruits (most not native), including soursop, custard
apple, and chicle. However, the
explanation of the different fruits came after the meal, so no one was certain
which ones they had eaten! Cheryl chose
to have a kangaroo cutlet; it seemed a bit like venison – intermediate between
lamb and beef, and a bit gamey. Kangaroo,
like bison (and rabbit), is a low fat meat, so not easy to cook without getting
tough and dry.
After lunch we took a short cruise on the Daintree River. We go up and down the river about a
kilometer, and our knowledgeable guide points out crocodiles (I wondered if he
kept them around by feeding them chicken carcasses or some such), as well as
white-rumped swiftlets, spotted whistling ducks, Papua frogmouths (kind of like
a whippoorwill), snakes, and wild hibiscus.
Our bus gets on a cable bound ferry to cross the river, and
then we have a long drive up into the rain forest to Cape
Tribulation, so called because Cook’s boat scraped the reef
hereabouts. This is a spot where the
rain forest comes right up to the beach, and the reef is just off the beautiful
beach. On the way we pass tea plantations. We also pass an ice cream shop on the way up
that we visit on the way down - - many flavors made with the fruit grown on
their own trees! The rain forest at Cape
tribulation looks much the same as what we saw earlier. I get some pictures of king ferns and fan
palms. Then it is a long 2-3 hour, 300
km drive home. As it was Sunday, we had
some trouble finding an eatery open after 8pm, but were able to get some
takeout Thai food.
Cairns 3
This was a fun day where we took the Kuranda scenic railway. This is a narrow gauge railway that goes
through multiple tunnels, with some harrowing hairpin turns. It’s about 75 km long. It was built to bring
gold down to Cairns from Kuranda and other tableland towns, and was later used
in WW2, when the military hospitals located in the tablelands. It cost around a
300,000 pounds to build at that time - - with inflation that would be about 60
million dollars today, but I think to rebuild this railway in 2023 would easily
be ten times that amount.
It’s a fun little train, with voice over by the conductor
telling little vignettes about the construction of the railway. We eat some ANZAC biscuits, an
oatmeal/shortbread kind of cookie that was developed for the troops in WW1. On
the way up we get to see the magnificent Barron river falls. Kuranda is a
little tourist outpost now. Cheryl,
Cindy and I walk a trail along the river and then into the rainforest before
heading into town. A lot of the eateries
are closed, apparently a common practice on Mondays since the covid lockdown. We
order some food, some ice cream first while we wait for our food to be
prepared.
We go to a little bird zoo with a big open flight
aviary. There are lots of parrots,
parakeets, and finches. There is a
cassowary in a separate enclosure (cassowaries can be very aggressive). We see a kauri tree that is 400 years old. Kauri trees have special smooth bark that
thwarts the growth of vines. Then we
take the scenic skyrail back down - -
this is a series of two long gondolas with a total length of 7.5 km, and great
views as it glides over the rainforest and past Barron Falls. At the halfway spot there is a little nature trail and a little display on Australian geology and natural history
At the end of the skyrail we get a bus back into Cairns for
dinner at a Greek resturant. The next
morning we walk around town one last time. I see fig birds and magpie-larks,
then it’s back to the airport for a flight to Brisbane.
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