Christmas Presence

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DAY 319

If we have a long walk then usually we have the next day off to recover, well there is no point, in my eyes, to turn this trip in to purgatory is there.

We walked hard yesterday so today was going to be an easy day, bad planning on our behalf as tomorrow we are going to be marooned at the house as the truck is in for a service, so again that will be a fairly easy day.

I had a terrible nights sleep last night and woke up feeling shattered so I did not hurry out of bed, we had a nice leisurely breakfast, and got ourselves together.

I don’t know why but Christmas is on my mind for some reason, but I just suppose I wonder where we are going to be for the festivities this year, last year was all very weird, we did not buy each other presents, but we had a bit of stability because we did a house sit in Port Stephens. We hope that we are able to be somewhere more settled for Christmas and not having to worry about a space on a campsite. I remember last year the closer it got to Christmas campsites were getting busy and most if not all of them were fully booked out for the Christmas week. It is the beginning of October next week, we have already seen Christmas cards in the shops and in fact we have already bought some from the RFDS, so I guess that is why Christmas has jumped into my mind.

We left the house and headed out to really just have a drive around Cairns a bit more today, and go and investigate the Kuranda Scenic Railway, which is the train line that we have crossed on our walk in the Barron Gorge National Park.

We are tossing up which one we are going to do, either the Kuranda Scenic Railway or the Skyrail. The dilemma we have is this, the Skyrail goes from its own terminal around Kamerunga and we could park the truck in the car park, the we go up on Skyrail and then come back on the Scenic Railway, which will let us off at Freshwater about 5k’s (Bus ride) back to the Skyrail terminal, or we can get the Skyrail up and back starting and ending at the same place.

Our last option is to get the Scenic Railway from Cairns Central up to Kuranda and back, which takes you through the lush rain forest, Baron Gorge National Park and passes the Stoney Creek waterfalls, which we have not seen yet.

Out thoughts unfortunately circle around the cost, as we have to be cost conscious, we are going to have an expensive week this week getting the Patrol serviced anyway.

We drive up to Freshwater Station where we can get the scenic railway from just to have a look and see what it is all about.

Freshwater is an operational Station not just a tourist attraction Situated in a quiet, leafy suburb of Cairns, amidst tropical gardens and authentic heritage railway carriages, a beautiful place to have breakfast before heading off on the train to Kuranda, railway carriages form part of the restaurant.

The Freshwater connection was built in 1984 as a tribute to the visionaries and pioneers who built Kuranda Scenic Railway between 1887 and 1891. The station is really quaint, we spent a couple of hours mooching around enjoying the glorious weather and this historic little place and of course the museum.

We took the pictures that we wanted and then headed back to Bayview, taking a different road so that we could see the cane fields and just take in some of the area.

The great thing that will top off today is that it is cheap Tuesday, so it is pizza night again, we are just taking advantage of that as we will not have that luxury again for a while once we leave Cairns.

However, to earn our pizza, we need to have our walk, this evening is very humid so the walk to the top feels like really hard work, but we do it!

Getting back we take ¾ of an hour to cool down and get our appetite back then book our pizza’s on line, and as soon as they are done we jump in the truck and go to collect them.

As usual the blog has to be written again and the photo’s if any down loaded, at 9.30 the film Crocodile Dundee is on and we want to watch it as we want to see if we recognise any of the landscape, where we have been on our journey. Some of the filming took place in Kakadu and Arnhem Land we recognise Ubir and the views over toward Arnhem Land but that is about it, some of the outback scenes could have been taken anywhere!!
Another part of the film is when Crocodile Dundee comes face to face with a bull in the middle of the road and “Charms” it in to lying down in the middle of the road. The Bulls real name was Charlie and he lived at the Adelaide River pub until he passed away due to Pneumonia not to long ago and he has recently being preserved by a taxidermist and is now happily back at the Adelaide River pub, stuffed for ever. But who can say they have worked opposite to Paul Hogan.

So until tomorrow bloggers should we be spared?

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Photos

Look out 4 Trains
Why 4 trains