Tropical Cairns and Surrounds

First - a note for my Dad.  He sent us a question through my Mom asking if dingoes barked.  He had heard that they do not bark and wondered if that was true (I provided a photo of some of the dingoes that K and I saw when near Uluru a few posts back).  K and I did not hear the dingoes make a sound while there.  We were at a reserve in Brisbane today (material for an upcoming post) and the ranger there told us in fact that dingoes do not bark.  They are closer in relation to wolfs than house dogs today.  She said dingoes do howl to communicate, but no barking - so there you have it Dad.

Cairns

In my last post, I shared our visit to the Great Barrier Reef.  K and I spent 2 full days 3 nights in Cairns.  One full day we spent on the reef.  The rest of the time, we explored Cairns and the surrounding rainforest area.

Cairns (pronounced "Cans") is in the state of Queensland in Australia.  It's a relatively small city - with a population just shy of 150,000.  However, the population is almost always inflated by thousands of tourists.  This is one of the key cities on the east coast of Australia from which to make a visit to the Great Barrier Reef.  Furthermore, it is almost always hot - and except for a few months in their summer, it is usually dry.  This makes it an ideal climate for tourists from all over the world, (even fellow Australians from further south) to come for a warm up too.  Our cabbies let us know that business was slow right now as Cairns exits the wet season - things pick up considerably in May we are told.

The city itself does not hold a lot to see/do.  There is about a 6 block area full of shops (mostly tourist trinket type stuff).  K found a nice art shop in the "Night Markets" shopping arcade in town and bought a didgeridoo and boomerang there.

The beautiful little marina is the hub of activity for trips to the reef, dinner cruises, as well as jaunts up the Trinity Inlet (into the rainforest).  Here is the marina from our hotel room at the Shangri La in Cairns.

While Cairns is a coastal city dominated by water activity, it does not have any nice beaches nearby.  The inlet is pretty shallow, muddy and often filled with jellyfish, crocodiles or other such nasty critters that swimming is prohibited.  So, the city has built a beautiful esplanade walkway around the inlet bay and put in a huge pool with artificial beach to allow everyone in Cairns to enjoy the sea without the beach.

 

Australians do up their public spaces in such a great way.  Along the esplanade are works of art, kids skate areas, beach gym work out areas, and free-to-use gas grill picnic areas.  I wish we were responsible enough and nice enough to give each other these in the US.

Kuranda and Rainforest

Cairns sits in one of Australia's oldest/biggest rainforests.  They provide two means of getting deeper into the rainforest to have a look see.  First, you can take a gondola/cable car ride up over the rainforest to a small little ex-timber town of Kuranda located 25 miles inland from Cairns.  Kuranda is pretty much just a little tourist town today with little shops, bird and koala sanctuary, etc.  You can also take the antique train to Kuranda.  K and I took the gondola up and the train down.

 

On the way up and down, you see some of the rainforest (where you get a chance to get out and do small hikes and take photos) and the Barron waterfalls (our mantra - "never skip a falls"),

 

Here are some pictures of the cable car ride up (the car had a see-through bottom).

 

We got a chance to see a few creepy-crawlies in the rainforest.



On the way up and back, you see Barron Falls.  At this time of year, the river is not so big, but in spring it is a huge falls.

Kuranda was a bit touristy, but still a cute little town to visit and spend the day. 

As an airline person, K was determined to help her passengers - no matter the state of the aircraft (this was an old DC-3 that was used as a movie set in Australia)

The train ride back was astounding.  The train route was carved by hand in the 1880s (15 tunnels and 37 bridges) and the original train cars are used today.  It winds its way through the rainforest valleys and mountains just outside Cairns.

[Side note:  we learned later that this trained has been shut down and even derailed a couple of times because of landslides.  In 2010, 5 people were injured.  Probably something we should have researched before we left!].

 

It carries you through the rainforest, past more waterfalls and beautiful vistas.  We sat next to a wonderful British couple that we had dinner with that night.

Cairns Odd/Ends

K and I have been able to try many different and unique types of food in NZ and Australia on our trip.  In Australia, we are finding a lot more diversity (Korean BBQ, Thai, kangaroo, ...) and we are "giving it a go" as they say in Aussie terms.  In Cairns, we tried a Balinese restaurant after our reef visit.  It was yummy!  The restaurant was very nice and the people charming, but we were placed at a table that had this statue sitting over our heads.

A little freaky.  K and I had fun giving our best impressions of our "shiva" overseer.  It's what you do when you have had too much good wine that day.

Couple of things to note in my morning runs through the city... First, for my niece Abby, there were a pile of girls playing field hockey each morning I was running.  Caught this snapshot for her.  Wouldn't be a bad place to come and go to school and play some hockey Abby!

In the US, we are in the midst of starting Obama Care (public health care) and still debating its merits.  I am not going to use this blog site as a place of discussion on the pros, cons or other arguments of publicly funded healthcare.  However, in Australia, you should know that there is a public health care system that provides for everyone.  According to many we have talked to, it can take up to 6 months to more than a year to get in for some non-essential health care needs.  So, there are also private insurance plans for those that can afford it.  In Cairns, this two-tiered system is most apparent.  They have two beautiful hospitals right on the Esplanade next to each other (if I ever get sick, I want to come here to recuperate and look out at the rainforest and sea).  Here are some pictures of the Cairns Private Hospital (orange brick building) right next to the Cairns General/Public Hospital (yellow and grey building).  We might want to ask ourselves in the US if this is the direction we want to head?

Another great stop on our journey through Australia.  The Great Barrier Reef is a can't miss place and Cairns is a nice relaxing, warm weather get away.  We were on to Brisbane on the 31st.  Stay tuned for more from there.