January 1 - January 6

Sydney to Cairns
Qantas 922
Departs Thursday, Jan. 1 - 10:40 AM
Arrives Thursday, Jan. 1 - 12:45 PM

Things to see and do:

Cairns Skyrail
Wildlife
Great Barrier Reef

We’re a little late getting an update done. We’ve been busy (and we’ve gotten lazy) and we haven’t had a lot of internet availability lately. Thanks for patiently waiting.

Thursday, January 1 (New Years Day)

We survived New Years Eve in Sydney and now we’re headed to Cairns (the Aussies pronounce it “cans”). We check out of the Best Western in Lidcombe and wait on our taxi to the airport. And we wait. And we wait. And we wait. 40 minutes go by and we’re getting very nervous. Finally, our taxi shows up. We’re not quite sure what happened (our taxi driver doesn’t offer up any explanation), but we’re just glad that we finally have a ride to the airport. We get to the airport and it looks like we’re going to make our flight. We finally get to a very unhelpful ticket agent after waiting in queue but she has no interest in helping us make our flight. She tells us that the ticketing for our flight has closed right before we hear an announcement over the PA system saying that the all remaining passengers need to check-in for our flight. We call that to her attention and she seems very disappointed when she eventually gives us boarding passes. Travel can’t be all fun, you know. At least we made the flight! Doug goes from almost missing this flight to actually getting upgraded to business class due to his British Airways status. The rest of us are jealous.

We get to Cairns and after waiting a mini-eternity, we finally get our rental vehicle. It’s a 4-wheel drive SUV, but as it was explained to Doug, taking it off-road voids the extra insurance we purchased. We’re finally on our way to the house that we’ve rented at Holloway’s Beach (it’s the 2nd beach community north of Cairns). It’s almost beachfront. It overlooks the beach road and a beach park and it has 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 2 kitchens and 2 living areas. We’re not quite sure if we’ll have enough room or not. It also has a pool. Life is good!

We do a grocery store trip and explore town a little bit. D.Ray recently started diving and has arranged a 3 day diving trip starting tomorrow. We find his dive company and he completes his paperwork. We’re all tired (probably from the New Year’s Eve experience) and have a quick dinner at Hungry Jack’s (known as Burger King in The States).

Friday, January 2

D.Ray leaves for his dive trip at 6:00 am. The rest of us sleep! We walk down to the swimming part of our beach. You see, in northeast Australia one just doesn’t go swim at the beach. They have some really nasty jellyfish here (they have one variety called the Box Jellyfish that has been known to kill people!). At the public beaches, they actually set up jellyfish-proof nets called “stinger nets” that help keep the jellyfish away. We hang out for a while at the swimming section. It’s HOT! We head back to the house and hang out at the pool. We head into town to go to the mall for a trip to Target (what is with us and going to Target???) and the grocery store. We find that there are actually two grocery stores side by side in the mall and it puzzles us greatly. And to further the puzzling, they’re both owned by the same company, Coles. We suspect that one is a more upscale version of the other, but we’re still puzzled why some company would want to do that. Doug proclaims this to be a process improvement opportunity. We walk through town some and cruise by the town’s lagoon. It’s a very large public salt-water pool. It’s pretty packed with people but is pretty nice. We find an internet café and make the update for our New Year’s Eve experience. We fix dinner at the house (grilled chicken) and Doug and Travis go on a nature hunt walk (reliving the Tasmania portion of the trip). We only see fireflies and call it a night.

There is a possible Jerry Springer moment at one of the neighbors with a lot of commotion and someone getting in a car with a suitcase. We’re not sure what’s happened, but we hope things like this don’t continue.

Saturday, January 3

The house has two sets of washer/driers and we’re keeping them all busy today. Today is our snorkel trip day. Cliff, Doug and Travis are going on a half-day trip to three different Great Barrier Reef locations for an underwater experience (hopefully with no sharks or jellyfish). It rains on the way out to the reef, but it eventually clears by the time we get there. They mention on the trip out that yesterday’s visitors had some minor jellyfish encounters. Just so happens, the tour company rents out (they call “hires”) stinger suits. Travis has a rash-guard wet shirt and Cliff has a shirt he’s planning on wearing, but Doug doesn’t have another shirt and ends up hiring a suit. It turns out to not be a bad idea in general because the sun is fairly intense and keeping the sun off of us is a good idea.

We get to the first reef location. Snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef is like swimming in an aquarium. There are a LOT of fish and tons of coral. Wow. Travis is using his new underwater camera and it seems to be doing an okay job. We see a lot of fish and take off for the 2nd location. They feed us lunch and we go for our second snorkel experience. The tour company briefs us on what we’re likely to see here, but they fail to mention that there is a fairly strong current. We see some more really great fish and then start to notice the current quickly pulling us away from the boat. Doug and Travis make it back to the boat and are fairly tired. Cliff finds that he’s making no progress against the current and is getting really tired. He signals back to the boat to get picked up. They send a Zodiac out to get him. Luckily the tour company is watching out after us (they briefed us on hang signals before we got in the water)!

We get to the 3rd location and we quickly size up the current situation after getting in the water. It’s hardly even noticeable and we get to see some really great fish at this location. The water seems a little bit clearer too.

All in all, with the exception of Cliff’s almost getting swept away to sea, we had a really good snorkel experience. We got to see parrot fish, a sea cucumber, a sting ray, a clown fish (like Nemo), an angel fish, and a lot more that we don’t even know what they are. Like we said before, it was like swimming in an aquarium!

On the way back to the house, we stop at a barber shop and Doug and Travis get much needed haircuts. The barber is really funny and we all have a really good time.

We get back to the house, do a bunch of laundry, and then eventually go back into town for dinner. The first place we try is closed for remodeling and we head to our contingency restaurant. It’s a well known pub called the Cock & Bull. Now we have another very perplexing moment. The pub has two different menus and kitchens. Doug and Travis order off the normal menu. Cliff orders off the “Carnivore” menu. They have to be ordered from two different kitchens. Then to top it off, all beverages have to be ordered from the bar. So to fully complete the dinner ordering, we had to place orders at three different locations. Crazy! Doug proclaims yet again another process improvement opportunity.

We’re all tired and head back to the house for some much needed sleep. Luckily there are no Jerry Springer moments tonight.

Sunday, January 4

We start off with a fairly lazy day. As the day starts to roll past noon, Doug and Travis finally round up enough motivation to go see the rainforest that’s just outside of Cairns. Cliff hasn’t been feeling greatly lately with cold/allergy problems, so he decides to stay home. We eat a late lunch at Hungry Jack’s on the way to Kuranda. There’s a skyrail tram that runs through the rainforest above the tree canopy. It consists of a car that rides on a cable system. We drive Kuranda which is the highest point to ride down (they didn’t have any tickets from the lowest location). There are two stops with short walks between Kuranda and Cairns. We buy our tickets and start on our rainforest experience.

We get off at the first stop and we’re told that due to the weather (there’s some rain around), they’re temporarily suspending operations so we’ll be stuck here for a while. We see a bush turkey and take some pics at Baron Falls. There’s a hydroelectric station downstream. They have a learning center where we spent a good amount of time before they open the skyrail back up.

On the second stop, we learn about the trees and some of the epiphytes that live on the trees. It’s all very interesting and a lot different than the rainforest in Cradle Mountain. We ride down to the Cairns stop and take some pictures of the bay, watch a lake of cable skiers (it’s water skiing without a boat – they use a cable system to pull the skiers around in a loop – there are even ski jumps!) and ride back to Kuranda. Now Kuranda is strictly a tourist village. There are lots of shops, cafes, a Koala Garden and whatnot. This being a tourist town, we’re once again perplexed to see that the entire town closes down at 4:00. There’s nothing open for us to do, so we head back to Cairns and stop off at a grocery store along the way to pick up some pork chops for the grill for dinner.

Monday, January 5

Today starts off as a fairly lazy day with some beach and pool time. We finally get bored enough and decide to take a drive up to Davies’ Creek to a swimming hole and possibly see a waterfall. It’s past Kuranda and we’re at risk of having some time issues because we have tickets for a Night Zoo this evening. We find our turnoff after going through Kuranda which is 6 km of a very bumpy dirt road. The extra car insurance coverage probably isn’t valid for this part of the trip. We see some HUGE termite mounds along the way. We finally arrive at the swimming hole. The water is cold and has a lot of sediment. We’ve noticed that all of the streams and rivers are brown from all of the soil washout. They must all be fed by rainwater and not springs. We have just a few minutes and decide to go find the falls. We find the falls, take some pics, and hurry back so we have time to get cleaned up before the Night Zoo. By the time we get back to the house, we have 20 minutes to get ready.

We get to the Night Zoo and eat and have drinks. There are not enough empty tables, so we join another group. One is a lady from Melbourne (she lived in New Zealand for a while, so Travis and Doug got to talk a lot about that) and she’s showing Australia to a friend of hers from Washington State and her grandson who happens to be from Shawnee, OK. We have a good dinner.

The Night Zoo starts off with showing us a possum, a barn owl (who flies very close to our heads) and a python (some in the audience didn’t like the python at all!). Next we’re off to see Koalas, and they have quite a few of them. They’re a lot more active than what they were at the Perth zoo. They gently pull a few of them off of their trees and let us touch them. We liked that part a lot.

Then they take us to the saltwater and freshwater crocs and have a feeding with one of the saltwater ones. They tell us that they are very territorial and there can only be one per pen (and can be more than 25 feet long!). They’re pretty big where the freshwater crocks are a lot smaller and you can have multiple in the same pen. We’re glad we haven’t run into any crocs!

Then we’re off to the kangaroos for coffee and tea and some sweet bush bread called damper. The damper is really good and the kangaroos are very used to people. They don’t mind being touched or fed (imagine that!).

Then the Night Zoo concludes with some bush music and some dancing. Cliff, Doug, and D.Ray all get recruited to do an Aussie version of the Hokie Pokie. Travis is sensible enough to stay behind and man the camera. That pretty much concludes the night zoo and we head back to the house so that we can pack up for our morning flight to Ayers Rock.

Tuesday, January 6

The owner of our almost beachfront house comes by at 7:30 am to introduce himself and make sure that our stay has been okay. We were pretty much up, but we just found that to be slightly odd to do that so early in the morning. We load up the rental car and arrive at the airport and luckily have no problems checking in this time.

See you again in a few days at Ayers Rock!