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Published: March 12th 2007
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Cairns Tropical Zoo
8 year old (!) croc. Kind of feels like a plastic bag full of jelly! We arrived in Cairns late on Monday evening after taking the luxury of a flight from Sydney and were immediately hit by the humidity when we stepped out of the airport to wait for our shuttle bus into the town.
We booked the shuttle and the helpful lady said it would be along in 15 minutes or so, so we should just grab our bags and wait outside. In typical Sods Law fashion, our bags were then first out and the bus was over 30 minutes to turn up. We sat in the heat watching the taxi queue growing to enormous lengths as other people joined it with their luggage, annoyed that for maybe a couple of dollars more we could have been right at the front of the line instead of waiting for an invisible bus! This was slightly further aggravated by the driver not knowing where our hostel was and so leaving us until last, meaning it took and hour and half to basically travel 10km or so. Still, could have been worse! Luckily our hostel, Cairns Citry Backpackers, had left us keys etc so we hit the sack pretty sharpish!
The next day we got
Cairns Tropical Zoo
The Koala - AKA the world's most spaced out animal. down to planning what we'd actually do for the next few days. We had 2 specifics in mind: the Great Barrier Reef and Cape Tribulation, and were unsure about the rest of the time. This was pretty much thrown out the window once we spoke to Rob at our hostel who immediately said don't do Cape Trib! He made a good case in as much as it's a long bus journey to drive past 12 beaches, visit the rainforest and then finally actually get some sand between your toes. But no swimming as it's still Stinger (jellyfish) season! He suggested a trip to the rainforest up in the Atherton Tablelands where we'd get to swim in the fresh water lakes and falls instead, so we opted for that and booked ourselves up on our tours (making sure we left a couple of all important rest days inbetween). We enjoyed the rest of a sunny day in Cairns by lounging around the open air Lagoon on the Esplanade and enjoying our first delicious nightly free meal in the world famous Woolshed (over 25s advised to get in early, eat and get out again!).
So, the next day we headed out
Cairns Tropical Zoo
Croc - bit older than 8 years old. They can live over 100 apparantly and never stop growing... to the Great Barrier Reef on the Falla, an old pearl lugger built in the 1950's (and rebuilt more than once since!). The Falla is the only wooden boat that does tours out to the Reef and it does have a certain charm because of it. Captain Doug also likes to finish any speech about her with a good throaty pirate 'arrrrr' as it seems only appropriate, which it is! We took a nice, slow cruise out to our first spot where we took a snorkel and an introductory SCUBA dive and refuelled up on a good lunch before heading off to another nearby spot - a tiny sand island in the middle of the Reef that only needs one palm tree and a Tom-Hanks-in-Castaway looking person to finish it off. We saw some amazing coral and marine life including some medium sized stingrays and a pretty big turtle (Luke saw this but Laura missed out!). Our cruise back to the town was spoilt by some nastier weather coming in but compensated by complementary Goon and cheese and a fresh fruit platter! A really good day, and we highly recommend the tour if you're about up here.
Unfortunately the
Cairns Tropical Zoo
The Wombat - the angry, fat cousin of the Koala! wet weather was here to stay for a while and our rest (AKA lazy) day was not the sunsoaked lagoon fest we'd hoped for, but nice enough and a good recharge before heading to the Tablelands the next day. On our morning pickup on Friday the weather didn't look much better but we headed off with fingers crossed. We visited some amazing rainforest and waterfalls with our knowledgable and slightly crazy tour guide, Bart, but we'll let the pictures speak for themselves rather than go on too much. What we didn't get pictures of though were any of the hundreds of leeches that were about and took a particular shine to Laura's warm Italian blood! We finished our day Platypus spotting, which hadn't been too successful for the past few days but we saw a couple (see grainy Loch Ness Monster style proof)!
We stayed overnight in Yungaburra at the On The Wallaby lodge before heading off the next morning to go mountain biking around Lake Eacham. The rain persisted (it
is the rainforest after all) but was probably a good thing as we had a couple of nasty hills to tackle! In the afternoon, we were forced to
Cairns Tropical Zoo
Red Panda - pretty cute. overcome our fear of all things kayak and go canoeing on Lake Tinaroo. Needless to say, our new replacement digital camera stayed locked on the minibus (anyone who hasn't paid attention see our Southwest Oz entry)!
We filled our last couple of days in Cairns (and Australia) by trying to squeeze in a few of the things we still hadn't got around to! For example:
Finally trying a couple of tinnies of Bundaberg Rum and Cola/Soda
Seeing some Koalas (had to head to the Zoo for this one)
Getting smacked round the head by a great eagle (not really on the list but it happened at the zoo!)
Tasting Milo (chocolatey malt drink stuff)
And as tonight is our last night, we're blowing off the Woolshed and splashing out on a final meal and drinking the bottle of wine we bought in Adelaide and somehow haven't got around to drinking yet!
So, bye for now and we'll see you from the other side of the Tasman!
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