Previously: part 1, Houston to Honolulu
Monday, September 16: Honolulu to Sydney to Cairns
Planes, planes, and automobiles
Breakfast was at 5:30 – an omelette, a sausage, yogurt, and fruit. The movies (which I slept through) were “Changing Lanes”, “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”, and “Life or Something Like It.” I had an emergency exit aisle seat on this 747-200 (an old one, one of only 3 in the Qantas fleet), which was nice for the legroom (but since it was over the wing, there was no view out the window. When I checked in at Honolulu, I thought of asking for a tall blonde Australian woman to sit next to me. Astonishingly, even though I didn’t ask for that, I got it anyway. I should have asked for a single woman, though. This six-foot blonde Aussie was a PhD professor at the University of New South Wales in the Environmental Management program. We didn’t get to talk all that much due to the overnight sleeping, but I did get some suggestions on things to do in Sydney.
Finally landed at 7:35 a.m. Sydney time, right on time at 9-1/2 hours and 5086 miles. Unfortunately I then had to wait 45 minutes to clear customs and get my bag (44 minutes of which was spent just standing in the queue) and another 50 minutes in the queue for transfer from an international to a domestic flight. Not good if I wanted to leave at 8:50 for Cairns.
When I got up to the counter I told the woman that I was supposed to have been on the flight to Cairns which left 20 minutes ago. “No worries, mate” and she booked me on the next one, leaving at 10:50, 2 hours after the one I was originally going to take. Next time I’ll schedule no less than 2-1/2 hours between connections. I take the time to change some of my currency, getting AUD$167.60 for USD$100. That’s 59.6 cents on the dollar – they’re making a nice profit since the official exchange rate is about 55 cents to the dollar. I should have gotten about AUD$181.
Flight delays and missing flights is turning into a bad trend. All of my flights so far have been either delayed or missed. The plane getting into Sydney was late and we’re at least 10 minutes delayed. All things considered, it could be worse.
The plane takes off 20 minutes late, and we’re off to Cairns. One of the first things I need to do at the airport is to book a hotel room, something I didn’t get a chance to do before I left. No worries, I can do all that at the airport. The map screen tells us that it’s a 3 hour flight to go 2057 km (1278 mi). Then we get to watch this morning’s Nine News and reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond”. I’ll read and play on the computer instead, transferring the photos from my camera to the computer and eventual placement on the web.
The uneventful flight landed 20 minutes late, though I did have a nice conversation with the couple next to me about stuff to do in Sydney (where they live). Our 767-338 is painted in the new livery of Australian Airlines, Qantas’ low-cost service from Cairns to points north; this is apparently the first jet in the fleet to fly into Cairns. Qantas had a cocktail party for the media and other invited guests, but apparently the invite list never made it to the passengers. The airport has a large board with a bunch of hotels in the area, ranging from a $15 per night hostel to $150 per night luxury hotel. I decide on a $69 room in the Great Northern, right across the street from the Reef Hotel Casino. A taxi ride is $12-14 and takes about 15 minutes, while the shuttle bus is $7 and takes about a half hour. I’m in no hurry. It’s mostly overcast as we leave the airport, where a sign says “Welcome to Cairns, where the rainforest meets the reef.”
The hotel is nice, clean, and efficient, though there’s no elevator and I had to carry my luggage up a flight of stairs just to check in, then up another flight to my room. My batteries are being recharged (figuratively and literally – my computer, Palm, and AA batteries all need power, and I need a nap). The Palm unit was successfully hard-reset and synched up, so it’s working fine now.
11:30 pm. I wake up from my “short” nap to find that I’ve slept for about 7 hours, and totally missed any chance to see any of Cairns. Everything’s closed by now except for the late night stuff. Went to the front desk and booked the tour of Kuranda (the rainforest) for Tuesday morning, then headed to the Esplandade, which is the main street on the waterfront in Cairns. The desk clerk said that there’s some late night places open, mostly hole-in-the-wall shops catering to “take-away” (take-out) or those out after hours. There were a few bars and clubs open, but not much else on a Monday night. I took a quick look in the Reef Hotel Casino, just a block away from my hotel, but their food didn’t satisfy my hunger, so I wandered down to the Esplanade and got some sweet-and-sour chicken for dinner at midnight. Checked out the Central Business District, some of which has been turned into pedestrian-only streets. Lots of shops, stores, restaurants, cafes, and pretty much everything. I’m sure it looks much better in the daylight when things are open. There's not a whole lot going on late night in Cairns on a Monday night (and nobody's watching Monday Night Football, since it's only 2 in the afternoon in Houston). And all the internet places were closed by the time I got there. Bed at 2:00, need some sleep for my 7:30 wakeup call on Tuesday.
Tuesday September 17: Cairns
Where the Rainforest Meets the Reef
With my body clock thoroughly messed up, I got up at 7, just in time for my 7:30 wake up call. The tour would leave at 8:40, so I had an hour or so to check out what I missed last night. Unfortunately most of the city doesn’t get to work until 9, so I had a muffin and a quick check of the area I saw last night in the dark. Found an internet café but their computers must have been running 286 chips they were so slow, so I barely had time to check my email before catching the shuttle at the hotel. The driver was helpful along the way, telling us things like to never go swimming in warm fresh or salt water, since the crocodiles are likely to be there. Cold water is fine, though. The economy of the area is based on tourism first, then sugar. With the rainforest and all the dive shops taking people out to the Great Barrier Reef, I’m not surprised at the order of those two. They have two seasons in Far North Queensland: wet and dry. That greatly influenced the culture of the natives, as we found out later.
The rainforest near Cairns spectacularly covers the mountains and surrounding areas. One of the touristy places to go is Kuranda, a town up in the mountains that has a scenic skyway and railroad servicing it for the tourists. Adjacent to the skyway is the Tjapukai cultural center, created by and for the local Aborigines who used to live in the rainforest there. For a fee, you can go inside and see recreations of dances, skills (from fire making to boomerang throwing to digeridoo playing), and artifacts. Anyone who has seen an American Indian show like this will get the idea, though they did a good job at the presentation. That took a couple hours to see the various presentations, then it was off to the skyway.
The skyway is above treetop level and gives a breathtakingly clear view of trees as far as the eye can see. A huge percentage of Australia’s animal species lives in the rainforest, many of which help support the rainforest itself by spreading seeds, etc. There were 39 towers from bottom to top (you can ride either way) with two stops in the middle, where you can disembark and see the rainforest close up. When I got off at one of the stops, the smell hit me – fresh sea air and trees. It smelled green.
Kuranda, the town at the top of the mountain there, wasn’t anything special (that I could see), though I didn’t have much time to check things out since I had to make the 2 pm train down in order to make it back to the hotel, get my bags, and get to the dive shop. Lots of opal dealers, hat sellers, restaurants, souvenirs, etc. The place I got lunch at gave you 5 minutes of free internet, which isn’t a whole lot of time. I had time to check my email (but not read it all) and send off a quick note to my family before time ran out.
The train ride down went along the same tracks that were built from 1882-1891. The workers up there needed a way to get supplies up and down during the rainy season when roads got bogged down, so the railroad to Cairns was chosen as the route. We got to do the leisurely trip down – ironic when one stops to consider how much work went into the railroad over a hundred years ago and how much of a lifeline it was then. The train goes down a different route than the skyway, so we got to see things from the ground level, including a tremendous look at Barron Gorge, a waterfall that now produces hydroelectric power, and through 13 tunnels and numerous bridges.
I’d recommend doing Tjapukai, then taking the train up the mountain and the skyway down (opposite from how I did it). The train only runs a few times a day, while the skyway runs continuously. You can take the train up and then when you get bored with Kuranda (or if you have time constraints like I did) you can take the skyway back down.
We waited an hour or so at the dive shop for everyone to trickle in, then loaded up the bus to take us to the docks. There was the Nimrod III, moored next to a bunch of other dive boats. Dump the gear in the cabins (I shared a room with 3 others in the forward part of the port pontoon of the catamaran) and stand on deck and watch the city recede in the distance. And then watch it get bigger as we have to go back into port for a quick maintenance on one of the engines, which didn’t sound right to the mechanic/first mate. Didn’t take long, then we were on our way again.
Visit the full Flickr set of photos from this trip report entry.
Go to Part 3: Diving on the Great Barrier Reef
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