Cairns

We both picked up colds on our Cape York Trip, so the week we spent in Cairns afterwards was partly spent recuperating. Once we started to feel a bit better we did a few short walks, including one at the Botanic Gardens that climbed up a very steep hill to a lookout over the Cairns airport. We spent quite some time sitting on a bench getting our breath back and watching planes take off and land, Cairns is a much busier airport than you might expect and our high vantage point gave us a perfect view.

On another day we went to Crystal Cascades, a lovely stream that burbles down to a series of water holes, set amongst palms and ferns. We also visited the Barron Gorge power station, which uses the water from the dam on the Barron River and has a fairly interesting exhibition on its history and the science of hydro-electricity generation. We had actually seen the power station from a distance when we had our day trip to Kuranda a couple of days before, it appears very, very faintly in a photo of the gorge in our previous post.

Our other big day out in Cairns was a trip to Green Island, a 15 hectare coral cay in the Great Barrier Reef. The island has been created by a build up of sand on top of the coral reef, seeds were deposited by visiting birds, gradually top soil was built up and a tropical rainforest emerged. Although the entire island is a national park it has a fairly up-market resort, and is a very popular day trip destination. We did a glass bottom boat tour over the reef and saw lots of fish, coral, clams and even a turtle. We also did the quite interesting walk around the island, then had a swim and lunch before catching the ferry back to Cairns.

Of course, sick or not now that we've hit the tourist towns of the east coast we couldn't resist the chance to have several games of golf, we're looking forward to lots of different courses over the next few months.

Day Out in Kuranda

Cairns is nestled in a very narrow flat area by the sea, surrounded by the foothills of the Great Dividing Range. One of the famous tourist attractions is a day out at the village of Kuranda, nestled in rain forest 334 metres above sea level. Like many other visitors we chose to go up on the scenic railway and return on the 'skyrail', or cableway. Although the end point of each mode of transport is next to each other in Kuranda, the start points in Cairns are some distance apart. We had been advised to park at the bottom terminus of the Skyrail, and book a bus to take us from there to the station to catch the scenic railway, which meant that when we were finished for the day we could return to our car and leave immediately, rather than have to wait for a bus transfer back to the station if we had left our car there originally. This worked really well, except that the day before we were booked to go we had a phone call at 8:25 asking why we weren't at the pickup point. That was soon sorted out, and on the actual day the transfer worked smoothly.

The rail journey certainly lived up to its name, and was very scenic. At first we were given sweeping views over the fertile flat strip of land and out to sea, with the Cairns suburbs dotted picturesquely about, then as we climbed higher into the ranges we travelled high above deep gorges. The railway was constructed in the 1880's using shovels and pick axes, a fantastic achievement given the difficult terrain. The 15 tunnels alone extracted a huge toll not just in money and sweat, but also in lives, with 23 confirmed deaths during the building. It took nearly 2 hours to complete the around 20km journey, with one stop at a waterfall lookout. It certainly lived up to its billing as one of the great scenic rail journeys.

The return journey by cable car provided a different perspective. Instead of hugging the side of the gorge we sailed majestically above it, and the straight line route reduced the distance to around 7 km. The trip takes about 45 minutes to complete, with 2 lookout stops enroute adding another half hour. We glided regally above the tree tops with magnificent 360 degree views, with the final descent back to sea level being heart stoppingly steep.

In between, we spent about 4 hours at Kuranda. Although the town was originally settled in the 1800s, a 'hippy invasion' in the 1960s set the tone for the town's current incarnation. Like many other towns dependent on the tourist dollar it is a mixture of hippy markets (hemp and tie-dye clothing, organic hand cream, crystals), Australiana (t-shirts, leather hats, pictures of Uluru and kangaroos) and generic tat (beaded jewellery, hand made soap, honey products). Plus huge numbers of ice cream stalls, coffee shops and cafes. The first thing we did was buy an ice cream, then we set off up the main street. We soon came across a 'candy store' making 'rock candy'. This particular rock was to have a Rudolph the Reindeer picture in the middle, and we spent almost half an hour watching the fascinating process of hand making the various colours of candy, pulling out some of it to add air and lighten it, then assembling a huge log of strips of different colours. This was then rolled and pulled out into tiny thin logs which when cut revealed a surprisingly good picture of the iconic reindeer. The samples handed around were still warm from the manufacture but surprisingly crunchy and very sugary-sweet.

Our next stop was a butterfly sanctuary, where we attended a free talk explaining the various types of butterflies there and their life cycles. It included a look at the 'nursery' where the butterfly eggs are collected and the caterpillars nurtured before they spin a cocoon to emerge later as beautiful winged creatures which are then released back into the large aviary-like enclosure. Each butterfly species likes to lay its eggs on a particular tree or tree part, and the butterfly handlers trick them by ensuring that there are none of these trees actually growing in the enclosure. Instead a few branches of each special tree is placed inside, and the butterflies lay their eggs on these. The branches are changed every 90 minutes and the eggs collected in a sterilised environment. They now have an 80% success rate of egg to adult, compared to 1% in the wild. We wandered through the enclosure with thousands of butterflies fluttering around, chasing each other in displays of aerial acrobatics and frequently mistaking clothing and other objects for flowers to land on. It was lovely.

Our time in Kuranda was completed by a quick browse through a few of the market stalls, a pleasant lunch in an outdoor cafe watching the other tourists go by and finally a walk through some of the lush rainforest and along the banks of the Barron River. It was a lovely day and we thoroughly enjoyed the time in Kuranda as well as the spectacular journeys there and back.

Cairns to Cape York

From Undarra we drove to Cairns, almost 300km and a world of difference away. From dry dusty scrub we entered wet rain forest. The tortuously steep and twisty road down the Gillies range would presumably provide spectacular views on a clear day, but on the first wet day we had experienced since Easter all we could see was mist and rain. It was one of the most difficult days we have had towing the van, and we were very glad to arrive in Cairns in one piece.

Over the last few months we have debated whether we would go up Cape York Peninsula, as the unsealed rough roads are unsuitable for our caravan. We decided that we couldn't really claim to have 'done the lap' without including this iconic area of Australia, and while we were in Darwin we booked a 10 day camping tour of the Cape. We chose a caravan park here in Cairns that also offered storage, so on the day our tour started (with a 6:15am pick-up) all we had to do was lock the van and leave it and the car to be put into storage by the park, they then put it back on site on the day we returned and plugged it into the power ready for us to come home to a cold beer.

It was quite exciting to be heading off on our first 'holiday' since we started caravanning. After the early pick up we were taken to the Cairns airport for a flight to Horn Island, in the Torres Strait. We had a look through the Horn Island museum, which had displays on Islander history and the role of the island in the Second World War, when it hosted a US air base and played a major role in the Battle of the Coral Sea. After a lovely buffet lunch we were whisked off for a tour of WWII sites, then bundled on the ferry to Thursday Island. At TI (as the locals call it) we had to almost run to make the ferry connection to the the town of Seisia on the mainland, where we were greeted by the bus driver and cook for our tour. It turned out that there were 10 of us altogether, plus the 2 staff members, which was a comfortable number in the 17 seater bus, allowing us to spread out enough not to have our day packs under our feet. Our fellow passengers were mostly a similar age to us, and we made a congenial group.

On our first full day of the trip we went up to the tip of Cape York, mainland Australia's northernmost point. It was quite a thrill to stand on this rocky point and know that all of Australia lay southwards. That afternoon we visited around some of the plane crash sites in the area, most of which were during WWII. The wreckage of many such crashes still lies scattered in the bush even after all this time. In the photo at right you can also see our bus.

From Seisia we headed southwards (there wasn't any other way to go really), the next 2 nights we spent at Twin Falls in a remote national park camp site. Toilets and a tap were provided, but no showers, but with such beautiful swimming conditions it didn't matter. Besides, if no-one showers then you can't smell each other!

Other nights were spent at camp sites attached to old telegraph or cattle stations, with one other 'shower free' night at Lakefield National Park. Slightly more luxurious was a night at Weipa, a remote bauxite mining town on the eastern shores of the gulf of Carpentaria. We did the 'optional extra' mine tour in Weipa, the bauxite is found in a thin layer only a metre or two below the ground, mining is done by stripping off the layer of top soil and digging up the bauxite below, the top soil is moved to rehabilitate a previously mined area so there is surprisingly little evidence of the mining left behind. Our last night of the tour was spent in comparative luxury at Cooktown, with clean hot showers and well lit toilets.

The road up Cape York is unsealed and, in places, very corrugated. There were times when it felt like our teeth would be rattled out of our heads, and the bus could barely manage 30 kmh. We had several river crossings, fording across at a steady pace. The bus only became bogged once, it took us several hours to dig it out of a deep patch of soft sand in, of all things, the car park of a picnic spot where we had stopped for lunch.

The cape was dryer than we had expected, mainly covered in the ubiquitous Australian scrub. We were a bit disappointed that we didn't see more wildlife, although there were occasional lizards and wallabies, and a snake, turtle or two. There were also several frogs, usually lurking in dark toilet blocks waiting to leap out and startle the unwary.

On the last day of our trip we drove down the Bloomfield Track from Cooktown back to Cairns. Unlike most of the previous landscape this was through the lush tropical rain forest that we associate with far north Queensland, although we were a little disappointed to find that the notorious crossing across the Bloomfield River has now been updated to a bridge. However the road itself was still pretty hairy, with hills of up to 30 degrees slope. After a ferry crossing across the Daintree River we came to Cape Tribulation, which is the end of the sealed road from Cairns. All of a sudden we were back in civilisation, with huge numbers of back packers and families on school holidays enjoying the beautiful golden beach.

Of course, one of the things about a 'camping holiday' is that you sleep in a tent. The tour company provided tents, inflatable mattresses and sleeping bags, and by the end of 10 days we were quite expert at setting up our sleeping quarters. However, the experience certainly made us appreciate the comparative luxury of our caravan!

Undara Lava Tubes

Undara is a private resort almost due north of Charters Towers. The road northwards, while sealed all the way, is at times only a single lane wide, so when another vehicle comes the other way you both have to get off the bitumen onto the dirt verge to pass. This is difficult enough when the the vehicle coming the other way is a 50 metre long road train, it becomes even more scary when the same sort of road train is going the same way and overtakes us. We were quite glad to reach the resort unscathed.

The Undara volcano erupted about 190,000 years ago, spewing rivers of lava across the land. The top of the lava cooled to form a seal, the hot interior continued to flow leaving hollow tubes behind. The lava tubes are now protected inside a national park, and are only accessible by doing a guided tour. We had booked a full day tour at the same time as we booked our caravan park site, we also gave ourselves an extra day to explore the other sights in the area.

The resort is very well set up with numerous well marked walking trails, we did several on both the afternoon we arrived and on our 'free' day. The scrubby landscape was pretty indistinguishable from many other places we have visited in Australia, but the walks and associated lookouts were interesting enough.

Caravan parks are generally on the outskirts of towns so it was a treat to be able to walk to the on-site restaurant for dinner. We both indulged in very 'Australian' meals, with John having crocodile fillets while Wendy had the tasting plate of crocodile, emu and kangaroo. The meals were excellent, and very reasonably priced given the isolation of the resort.

Of course, the reason for going to Undara is to experience the lava tubes. Our full day tour visited 7 different tubes, plus provided a walk around one of the many volcano craters in the national parks. The tubes are incredible, you can really picture the hot molten rock pouring down inside, at speeds up to 20 kmh. Iron and calcium have created colourful patterns on the walls, and bats huddle overhead. While the tubes superficially resemble limestone caves, the smooth walls and even shapes are quite different to a typical cave formation. There are no stalactites or stalagmites, although some dripping molten rock has formed 'lavacles' that superficially resemble the more familiar limestone formations. The full day tour visited all the tubes that are open to the public, although some of them involved quite heavy duty scrambling over fallen rocks to access. We also had to wade through freezing knee high water in one of the tubes, apparently this is the first time in at least 70 years that water is still present this late in the season, the flooding and heavy wet season just past is unprecedented in living memory. The photo of John at right shows only ankle high water, but already you might be able to see his toes curling up in the cold!

All in all we had a fantastic time at Undara, it is an experience unlike any other available in Australia, and virtually anywhere in the world.