Cairns

It was time to pack up and leave Innisfail and our river side caravan park. So we travelled through more cane fields, through Cairns ( not easy towing a van) and north to Lake Placid  caravan park. We have spent the past few days exploring Cairns.


We booked into the caravan park for five nights. It wasn't that easy to find places that would take dogs so we are squashed in but its quiet. My sister and her husband are travelling too and they're staying here,  so its been nice doing things together.

We went along the coast to the seaside suburbs  with beautiful beaches such as Palm Cove, Yorkeys Knob, Kewarra and Trinity Beach. A strip of sand (not white though) fringed with vegetation, including lots of coconut palm trees, a narrow road and on the other side numerous hotel, backpackers, resorts. All the accommodation options you could wish for and of course eating places. AND plenty of tourists. I love these huge paperbark trees. Returned home via a wetland park but as we had to leave the dog in the car and it was warm we didn't do it justice. A board walk over mangroves and lots of rustling in the bush. Bit creepy. Nice lake,  not so many waterbirds but I think it was the wrong time of the day. The next day we went onto the centre of Cairns and walked along the wharf before dropping the vehicle off for a service. We saw a Curlew in the park at the centre of Cairns and he posed for a photo. Today we did the “must do” trip to Karunda. We travelled up on a train line built in 1885 by about 1500 men armed with only pick and shovels (thank mining for the line). The line has 15 handmade tunnels, 55 bridges and 98 curves. It travels through the world heritage listed wet tropics, up Barron River Gorge to Kuranda 320 meters above sea level. Waterfalls, ravines, dense rain forests..beautiful. We wandered around the historic village of Karunda with markets opened daily to cater for the hoards of tourists that come each day. Originally the town had lots of hippie artists and now although the original markets are still there with local craftspeople there are many other tourist type shops as well. We had yummy Thai pumpkin soup for lunch.... in the hippie part.    
A visit to butterfly house was one of the highlights of the day. All the local rainforest butterflies species are there including the electric blue Ulysses butterfly and the fluoro green and yellow Cairns Birdwing. They were awesome and for some reason they were attracted to my green t-shirt as the photos show. To finish the day off we returned via the 7.5 km sky rail above the rainforest. The tallest tower is 40.5 metres above the ground. All the towers were helicoptered in to place without disturbing the ground, no roads were built.