Melbourne and on to Cairns

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Monday 23 November

Another good nights sleep, went to bed, went to sleep, slept for hours,woke up, got up. Just how I like it.

Not an early start, again, our mission was to return the hire car to Hertz by 12.00.

We had directions and local advice, we set off about 10.30 am.

The instructions were brilliant and found our way straight there. There was no drama at all in the return. Total kilometers 1639 over the last few days.

Then we went to find the shopping areas. We pottered for a while and purchased a few items.

Stopped for lunch at an Italian restaurant in the theatre area. Pat had a Salmon penne and I had a spaghetti carbonara.

St. Paul's Cathedral was open so we popped in to look around.

Then off to the Melbourne visitor centre, to find out a few things. Then off to the Immigration museum.

Entrance was AUS$12.00 and told the stories of the various people who make up the Australian population.

Then back to Flinders station and got the train back to Dennis. It went passed our stop, so we got off at Ivanhoe and caught another train back.

An lovely evening of chatting with Paul & Liz.

Tuesday 24 November

Another slow start and then off to the local train station and headed to Melbourne City about 11.30 am.

We had received directions to cinemas in Melbourne and found our way to the Kino cinema. The film we wanted to see was the new Bond movie - Spectre and there was a showing at 12.30, which suited us. AUS$19.50 each.

Another good Bond film and we were back in the world again after 2.30 pm.

We looked around the city for a while and eventually headed to Flinders station, where we found our train, but everyone was asked to leave due to an incident, so we ended up on a train out to Ivanhoe again, then back to Dennis.

Liz had said she would cook us all a roast meal for our last night and everyone turned up from their day's adventures and we had a meal with the six of us.

Good food, good company and a very pleasant evening.

We packed and readied our stuff for the early morning departure and said our goodbyes to Rory and Fran, as we wouldn't see them tomorrow.

The weather has improved since we arrived and we had sunshine all yesterday and today.

Wednesday 25 November

Paul had volunteered to drop us at the airport and we left at 6.15 am. Liz had woken to wish us goodbye.

An uneventual journey to the airport and check in with no problems. The flight was on time and we landed at Cairns shortly before the scheduled arrival time.

I had a window seat and it was great for a change to see the landscape, as we weren't very high. Miles and miles of nothing, with thin little lines occasionally disaapearing off into the distance, which I assume was some track or road.

The amount of greeness changes as you head further North.

Cairns airport isn't very big and we only waited short while for our baggage to arrive, then over to the car hire desk and after filling out the paperwork off to the car.

Another automatic Toyota Corolla, the last one was a real pleasure to drive.

Found our way out of the airport and within a few minutes we were at the hotel, which is only 4 kilometers from the hotel.

The Cairns Queenslander is on Lake Street, one of the main streets running through Cairns. The cost is just over AUS$100 per night. Not a new place but the bathrooms at least have been refurbished and are to a high standard.

We unpacked a little and settled into the room for a while then set off to find some shops for purchases of a few items and a number of tasks to achieve.

The town was straight down and we parked a little outside the main drag. We found a small cafe and had an all day breakfast and a club sandwich, which was just what the doctor ordered. Cost with drinks AUS $28.

Then off to woolworths, we are in a studio apartment with a little kitchenette, so we can do food if we choose. Everything we could want was here but we had other things to do first, so left the shopping until later.

Whilst we are in this area, a boat trip to see the great barrier reef, kuranda and a visit to Daintree are on the cards.

Pat had done her usual research and had a rough idea of what we might be doing, now we needed to flesh it out.

There are many, many shops selling tours, we found one we liked the look of and browsed the brochures.

After a while a young guy came over, asking what we might be interested in and said he could probably give us a better idea of what to look for. We explained the ideas we had and he suggested a couple of possible boats. We thanked him and he moved away.

His ideas did suit what we wanted so after chatting together Pat and I decided that we would go ahead and we caught up with him again and booked a boat trip for this Friday. We talked with him about Kurunda while there and got some more information from him about that, along with a leaflet.

The car was next and we moved it closer to Woolworths, bought our supplies, we got bread, butter, cheese and stuff like that. Then back to the hotel at about 5 pm.

We rested and discussed the Kurunda trip. To go by ourselves would cost only slightly less than going by organised tour. So we chose to book a tour.

That we did at reception in the hotel, very easily, as we left at 7.15 pm to have an evening walk along the promenade.

We saw fruit bats, boys playing volleyball, people bbqing, jogging, walking and running and cycling. Some simply walking like us. The temperature is gorgeous and we walked for about an hour and a half.

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