Blogs from Inn The Tropics, Cairns, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

Saturday 27th November Our new room is much better and we got a decent sleep with the aircon left on but there’s no happy medium for me as I grabbed an extra blanket as I started shivering during the night. Aye im a moaning git. We are picked up after a mishap as our bus drove past us and I had to phone the company to come back and get us. No worries as we are soon on our way past Redlynch and onto Freshwater village for our skyrail trip. Spanning 7.5 km over Barron Gorge National Park, the Skyrail experience includes a scenic cableway ride and stops at two rainforest mid-stations. Our first phase of the skyrail took us 2km up the Macalister Range into the Rainforest in Barron Gorge National Park. As we rose ... read more

Well its now been 6 beautiful nights in Cairns. It really is an awesome place to visit but I don't think I would live here as its way too touristy. I put it on the same scale as surfers paradise. I went down the esplanade on Friday to take a few pics around the swimming thing they have down there and there must have been at least 500 - 1000 people sitting and lazing around. There was this awesome musician busking with this freaky looking guitar ( see pic ), I think I will get one of his cd's on the way back thorough. I did only one day of fishing and mud crabbing up the Barron river, but to no avail. I got a heap of mud crabs but they were all either female of ... read more

Well after 3 days straight on the number one Highway I have finally made it !!!!!! the drive up was an interesting one, coming in to Sydney past Kiama I thought I was going to get blown off the road. Then coming through Sydney, What a joke of a place. I will be taking a BIGGGG detour on the way back down just so I don't have to go through that hell hole again. One thing I must say about NSW though is that once you get pas Newcastle the Roadside rest areas are Awesome. Very clean and nice toilets that are well maintained and lots of space. One night there was at least 30 caravans already parked up by the time I pulled in at 830!! The Troopy is an awesome car to travel in, ... read more

Sarah, Nora, Jess and I went up to Clifton Beach the other day. It's not exactly what you'd think of when envisioning an Australian beach but it's close. The water isn't totally clear until about 50 feet off-shore. But other than that, it's a post card. White sand beach that gradually fades into a palm tree forest and small green islands right off the coast. Wednesday we went to the rainforest and went cliff diving. We were initially just going to find waterfalls and take pictures until we saw a bunch of kids jumping. I couldn't help myself. You had to swim across a little lagoon and then use ropes to climb up. There were three levels to jump from. The first was about 30 feet, the second around 60 and the third was somewhere around ... read more

3 April, 2010: Fall break came and instead of driving the 5 hours from KU to see family, they were gracious enough to fly the 16 hour/ 2 day excursion to see me. What a funny dimension time is...or maybe I should say spacetime. Either way a new perspective is gained when flying long distances...loose days and gaining days as if they were chips in a poker game. Our first excursion day was spent visiting the rainforest. We took the skyrail rainforest cableway up to Red Peak, Barron Falls and then to the city of Kuranda. As alluded to in the title, it did rain for most (23 hours and 55 minutes) of the day but in the end I guess the rain made the RAINforest experience more realistic. And to be really optimistic we got ... read more

Unser letzter Ausflug an der Ostküste führte uns zum Daintree National Park. Im Vergleich zum subtropischen Regenwald auf Fraser Island ist der tropische Regenwald im Norden der Ostküste noch saftiger und vielfältiger. Was uns auf Magnetic Island noch verwehrt blieb, konnten wir beim Besuch des Regenwald-Zoos in Port Douglas mehr als ausgleichen. Emus , Kängurus, Krokodile und Koalas konnten wir hautnah bewundern und letztere sogar auf dem Arm halten. Somit haben wir unsere To-see-list der australischen Tiere ein gutes Stück abgearbeitet. Aufgrund der hohen Luftfeuchtigkeit tat die Abkühlung im klaren Regenwaldfluss im Anschluss sehr gut. Wäre der Fluss nicht von Lianen und anderer Urwaldvegetation umgeben, hätte man das natürliche Schwimmbad glatt mit einem Gebirgsbach in den Alpen vergleichen können. In der Nähe der Mündung des Flusses in den Pazifik waren wir froh... read more