January 28 – February 1, 2024

Our flight the next morning to Cairns at 12:30 pm would again give us plenty of time to clean up and check out of the Airbnb and still get to our flight.  We’d be flying for the first time on Jetstar, an Australian low-cost airline headquartered in Melbourne and a wholly owned subsidiary of Qantas, created in response to the threat posed by the airline Virgin Blue (now known as Virgin Australia).  Our flight would run us $130 per person, entirely reasonable given the time and distance we would be covering. 

Check-in again went smoothly, and we were soon airborne, the flight pleasant enough with more services (drinks and some food) than one would expect from a low-cost airline, including that we got to check a bag for free.  We landed in Cairns at its small airport and knew we had traveled to a different world as soon as we walked to the terminal, heat and humidity off the charts.  Again, we were able to get transport large enough for all of us to head to Ashley’s Place, the Historic, spacious & conveniently located with AC Airbnb we’d booked for our five nights stay here. 

Cost wise it sat in the middle of the pack at $36 per person per night and I don’t need to mention just how valuable that Air Conditioning was given how hot it was outside, day and night.  After unpacking and making a quick run to the market for supplies, Kim, Bev and Marty headed to the harbor to check it out and grab a bite to eat.  Joanna and I decided to stay closer to the house and instead walked a short distance (all I could manage by then) to In 2 Thai for dinner. 

Their website recommends making a reservation, but we took our chances and just showed up and were lucky to get a table for two as the restaurant soon filled up.  Joanna ordered a Ginger Beer while I had a XXXX Gold (a mid-strength Australian lager manufactured in the state of Queensland by Castlemaine Perkins. It is one of Australia’s most popular beers and was yet another good example of the type of 5% lager found worldwide, the one product beside Levi’s jeans that brings us all together. 

Not having had any Asian food yet, it was a welcome change from the diet we’d enjoyed so far on the trip, and we ordered something typical for us, starting with some spring rolls followed by the Pad Pak Mix Vegetable Stir Fry with Chicken accompanied by some Jasmine Rice.  We thoroughly enjoyed both dishes and left satisfied by our choice with tab coming in a 59.25Aus ($39.18).

We didn’t have any scheduled outings the next day and so to beat the heat, we took in a movie in the afternoon.  We all met up at the theater (the others had gone out exploring again) and we bought our tickets, for about what we would pay here for an afternoon show, that is $12 apiece with food (popcorn and a Diet Coke) also roughly the same.  We enjoyed our movie, the Holdovers starring Paul Giamatti given we escaped the grinding heat of the day and felt we came out ahead all around. 

One of the best things about an afternoon movie is when you get out it is just about the right time to go get a beer, which is exactly what we did at Hemingway’s Brewery at the Cairns Wharf.  Curiously, as much as we like to drink beer, outside of our stop at the one in Christchurch and on the bike tour in Queenstown, this would be our first visit to a brewery or brewpub and in this case, it was worth the visit. 

Joanna started off with a Blood Orange IPA and I got a Helles Lager (tonight would be an all-German night for me) and those were quickly consumed enabling us to order another round, a Doug’s Courage IPA for her and the Bock Bier for me.  They were just the thing to help us wash down our generous and delicious order of fish and chips.  Our tab came to 72AUS ($48.17), comparable to what we would pay in the States.  As I believe I may have mentioned in an earlier post, an initial concern of mine would be that food and drink would be more expensive both here and in New Zealand.  But as we had come to discover, this is not the case and, in many instances, what we received was a bargain compared to similar meals at home. 

The following day would be a full one as we’d booked the Tropic Wings Kuranda Deluxe tour which would include 100% Electric Coach to the start of the tour, one way travel on Kuranda Skyrail Rainforest Cableway, entry to the Rainforestation Nature Park, a Aussie BBQ Lunch, the Pamagirri Aboriginal Experience, the Koala & Wildlife Park, a visit to the town of Kuranda, and the Army Duck Rainforest Tour.  It would be a bit on the pricey side at $200 per person, but in the end, it was well worth cost. 

We met the tour at a hotel where we were picked up by the electric bus which soon deposited us at the entrance to the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway.  This is a 4.7-mile cableway running above the Barron Gorge National Park, in the Wet Tropics of Queensland’s World Heritage Area.  It operates from the Smithfield terminal in Cairns to the Kuranda terminal on the Atherton Tableland. It journeys through the Wet Tropics Rainforest, home to the world’s oldest tropical rainforest, older than the Amazon Rainforest and It was the longest gondola cableway in the world when it was completed in 1995.

The cableway includes six-person gondola cabins that glide meters above the treetops and a one-way trip takes about 1.5 hours.  We would stop at two rainforest stations, each allowing for exploration of the forest floor on boardwalks and educational information on this World Heritage area.  We exited at the first stop, Red Peak, where a series of guides led us around the boardwalk providing loads of information, little of which I can recall, about the flora and fauna of the surrounding area. 

Our next stop was Barron Falls, which are created by the Barron River descending from the Atherton Tablelands to the Cairns coastal plain.  Protected within the Barron Gorge National Park, the volume of water we got to see occurs after substantial rainfall during the wet season.  For much of the rest of the year, little more than a trickle is evident, due in part to the presence of a weir behind the head of the falls that supplies the Barron Gorge Hydroelectric Power Station located downstream in the gorge.  Regardless, it was an impressive sight, although not quite on par with some of our more iconic falls such as Niagara, Yellowstone, and Yosemite and Vernal in Yosemite Valley. 

We’re going to pause in our journey here on the Skyrail and pick it up in the next post.  We shall see you then. 

Links

Ashley’s Place: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/31971527?source_impression_id=p3_1720975639_P3DWMiMNbIIV-x9_

In 2 Thai: https://www.facebook.com/in2thai/

Hemingway’s Brewery: https://www.hemingwaysbrewery.com/

Kuranda Deluxe Tour: https://tropicwings.com.au/tours/kuranda-deluxe/

Skyrail Rainforest Cableway: https://www.skyrail.com.au/

Barron Falls: https://tropicalnorthqueensland.org.au/articles/barron-falls-guide/