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

"Not all those who wander are lost". JRR Tolkien I have in prior travels and blogs extolled the merits of RV travel as being the very best way of truly seeing a country. Very few rules apply but our philosophy is simply never to plan or book ahead, avoid staying in one place for less than two nights and avoid doing more than 300km on any single day between destinations. So, with these markers in place our final evening in Port Douglas revolved around planning how to get to Cairns, our next stop. Slipping down the Great Barrier Reef was too easy and obvious, so we chose an inland route. Cyril, (nickname for the voice on our navigator device and with ZERO deference to President Ramapromisa), duly kicked in when we had typed in a key ... read more

Hi there mates, The day started at 6:30 am. Yay. Good morning.. After a breakfast, and preparing for the day, we stepped into the car to go up the mountains to see some crater lakes. The idea behind it was interesting; after a big explosion of magma and watervapour, the lakes were formed on top of a volcano that is not inactive but 'sleeping'. But when we arrived, it was really really cold and we were all dressed in shorts, crop tops and flipflops, so we runned into a tea house for some coffee and tea with scones. Beautiful scones with unsweetened cream and tasty jelly, to mention for a moment. After the first crater lake, we went to a second one which was perfectly round but also too cold for a swim. As we walked ... read more

Hi to all you wonderful people from back home, Finally we found a moment to sit down and start our blog so all of you back home can follow our adventure down under. After an exhausting 42 hour journey, we finally arrived in Australia. Since we unexpectedly had to stop over in Brisbane on our way to Cairns, we got the opportunity to fly along the coastline of northeast Australia, which convinced both of us, that this was the right destination for our long adventure. It was an amazing sight with hundreds of kilometers of beaches and we could even see the Great Barrier Reef from the aircraft. Upon arrival we checked into our first little hostel, rested a bit before going out for a free dinner. Most hostels here in Cairns have a free meal-ticket ... read more

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