17 – Cairns

We flew from Hong Kong to Brisbane where we had to transfer to the domestic airport for our connection to Cairns. The first impressions of Australia were that it was very clean and hot. On arrival at Cairns airport we passed through immigration and baggage collection then went and picked up our hire car. 

We had booked a car through Hertz. The man at the counter asked where we came from, when we said Aberdeen he said that he used to work for a company that had its head office in Aberdeen.  It was Mitchells Self Drive.  I said that was a coincidence, my mother used to work there. I gave him her name and he said “ I know Kitty, I used to speak to her every day”.  He’d worked in their Bolton and Manchester offices, small world. My mother retired when the company closed and he emigrated to Australia.

We picked up a Toyota Yaris and headed a few miles north to Trinity Beach where we had reserved a studio apartment.

 We were shown to our apartment which was stunning with windows which looked out over the Coral Sea in the South Pacific Ocean. It was gorgeous. We had booked the room for 4 days, but it was so good we decided to book it for a further 3 days.

There are lots of things to see and do around Cairns.

We spent sometimes at various beaches along the coast.  There are really nice beaches at Port Douglas and Palm Cove. 

The only problem is the jelly fish.  They call this time of year “stinger season”. All the beaches have a small netted area where it is usually okay to swim but occasionally they have to close them if the box jelly fish (can cause death) have gotten in.

We lay in the sun for a short while, then cooled off with a dip in the sea.

Inland is the rainforest. It is the oldest surviving rainforest in the world.  We only viewed a very small part of it. We took the cable car up through the canopy to Karunda, a small village in the middle of the forest.

The cable car is in three sections, so you can get out at the stations and take a walk through the wooden walkway to see the views.

Another of the stations takes you to a waterfall which should be very fast flowing at this time of year because it is monsoon season. Unfortunately the monsoon hasn’t arrived this year yet, so the waterfall was really just a trickle.

At Karunda they have various arts and crafts shops which sell a lot of Aboriginal art.  It was interesting to look at.  There are also some wildlife parks.

The butterfly park has lots of native butterflies and a laboratory where you can see the caterpillars and chrysalis which eventually turn into the various types of butterfly.

The natives are friendly but clingy.

What's that Skippy?   You need help to put out a bush fire!

The native animal park lets you have hands on contact with koalas and kangaroos as well as enclosures with crocodiles, wombats and snakes. The bird aviary was home to various parrots, cockatoos, cassowary and other birds.

Some of the birds would land on you looking for food.

A large macaw mistook my earring for food and pulled it out of my ear. Needless to say I didn’t get it back. I got a scratch to my arm and a bite to my finger instead.

We took a trip up into the Atherton Tablelands which is a mountainous area not far out of Cairns. The road twists and turns up the mountains where you can visit many lakes and waterfalls.

We took a route known as the waterfall circuit where we saw some beautiful scenery.

The highlight of our time in Cairns has to be the trip to the Great Barrier Reef.  We chose to go with Ocean Spirit, a large catamaran that sails out of Cairns Jetty to Michaelmas Cay.

Michaelmas Cay is a sand island that is a bird sanctuary situated on the outer Barrier Reef. 

We were both a bit nervous about the trip.  We would get to snorkel off the beach, but we hadn’t been too successful the last time we tried to snorkel.  As I said earlier it’s stinger season here, so we had to dress the part for snorkelling. A bit like the north sea, you have to wear a survival suit known as a stinger suit.

We were given snorkel, mask, flippers and a stinger suit. It did nothing for my figure, in fact Syd said that I wouldn’t need any extra buoyancy devices.

He’ll pay for that later! I thought I’d lost weight after our trip through Asia.

 We transferred from the catamaran to the island on a small boat and were given a short snorkelling lesson before setting off on our own.  It took a little bit of time, but we were soon swimming among the coral and fish.  It was beautiful and time passed too quickly.  We were soon being called back to the boat for lunch.  After a fabulous lunch we went out on the glass bottom boat to view the coral and get some information on the reef. We saw many different types of coral. After the reef tour we went back out to the island to snorkel again.  It was stunning. This part of the reef is the closest to the surface, so it is perfect for snorkelling. 

Most other parts would have to be viewed by scuba diving.  I really felt like I was deep under water. The fish were swimming at my eye level and the coral was just below me. The clams were huge about 30 inches long. Syd saw a four – five foot stingray swim below him, Steve Irwin sprang to his mind. A few others saw a reef shark and turtles.

We met some really nice people. Rick and Cindy from Minnesota and Vince and his family and friends from Melbourne.  

It was a gorgeous day, the weather was not too sunny, warm and calm.  It was a day that we’ll never forget. Another wonder of the world to add to the tick list.