Blogs from Kuranda, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 7

For the past week Cairns and the surrounding areas have been in the middle of a monsoon. Towns nearby (as in perhaps a 15-20 minute drive away) have had families trapped inside of their houses from the flooding. The river, I think it is the Barron River, rose 12 meters higher than normal in like 3 days or something. The father was impressed by my use of the metric system when I relayed this information, but I don't know the conversion so I'm forced to parrot the news station. No one wanted to drive with sheets of rain coming down, so work was very slow and filled with cleaning. The only excitement was the baby crocodile necropsy (a bunch from the same group of eggs died--they had irregular livers, so maybe genetic birth defects?) and a ... read more

Photos du centre des koalas de Kuranda!!... read more

Tuesday was the day that Vlad and I had booked a helicopter tour of the Great Barrier Reef, but due to weather conditions, our flight was cancelled. We settled, instead for a scenic tour up to Kuranda. Amanda had joined us in Cairns, so the three of us set off shortly before noon. We rode the Skyrail up to Kuranda. It's basically just a gondola that rides overtop of the treeline, so you are looking down at the rainforest andhave some spectacular views of the countryside, and the coast in the distance. The ride is about 40 minutes in total, but there are 2 stations along the way that you can stop at, so we did. At the first station, we did a guided walk through some of the rainforest, and the guide explained a lot ... read more

We decided to do a day tour via the local bus to the small vibrant world heritage rainforest village called Kuranda 25kms northwest of Cairns. The short journey up winding roads into the rainforest mountains overlooking the sea and the cable cars was beautiful. On arrival we decided to take the Karanda Scenic Railway to the amazing Barron Falls. The short historic railway offered great views of the rainforest, the falls and the sparkling water in the rock pools. Next we had a look around the Heritage Markets and then visited the charity funded bat rescue centre. The Flying Foxes closest relative is the Madagascar Lemur. They are beautiful creatures with cute brown faces, and huge wings that they wrap around themselves whilst hanging upside down on one leg! Barbed wires or electric cables have injured ... read more

Went down to the hostel reception ready for the pick up at 8:30 whilst waiting there were a couple of people who had returned to the hostel saying they were stuck, when the full story came out the bus driver had advised them that no transport was going south due to the river Tully being flooded. My bus picked me up and we drove round a few hostels and hotels as we were driving the news came on and advised that the rivers had flooded and that Cairns was looking as if a cyclone would hit in the next few days. The bus took us to the skyrail station which is a 7.5km cable car run above a rainforest on the way up it stops at two different stops where you can do a little board-walk ... read more