Cairns

We put Georgia to bed in her snuggy cradle on the hardstand in Bundaberg (Queensland, Australia). Along with the hardstands there's also some nice bright blue ropes holding her down just in case she has to sit through some high winds. The field behind her gets a fair number of browsing kangaroos that hopefully don't jump the chain-link fence.

On our trip back to the US we decided to make a bunch of stops on the way. The basic itinerary: Brisbane-Cairns-Osaka-Honolulu-San Diego-Ft Lauderdale-Jacksonville-Greensboro, GA-Spartenburg,SC-Seattle-Bellingham,WA.
We landed in Cairns in the rainy off season. It was still clear it is a heavily tourist focused town. Can you guess where a lot of the tourists come from by the sign above in the airport toilet?

Since our flight was going to go through Cairns anyway we decided to stay for a few days to ride the train up to Kuranda and take the Skyway gondola back down. Cairns is pronounced Cans - don't ask me why. Kurunda is an aboriginal tourist town. The railway went in the 1890s for gold extraction. It began being a tourist railway in the 1930's.

The train station in Kuranda is fairly original. It has a switching yard so that the train direction can be turned around. This is the switch house containing all the manual controls for the yard switches. The three colors separate the controls for turning the switch, locking the switch and setting the signal. Visiting the switch house was right up there with checking out rusty stuff.

This local was playing a large didgeridoo on the sidewalk, making sounds of the jungle animals.

It was dumping down rain when we headed into Bird World who's claim to fame is that it is the largest single collection of free flying birds in Australia. I should have saved this photo for Valentines Day or, as I was convinced it was pronounced as a kid, Valentimes Day.

There was something really tasty to Chris' rubber soled shoes for this ring necked parrot.

Hungry critters.

This dinosaur looking Cassowary is native to Queensland. They can get to 5 feet tall.

Lots of waterfalls viewable from the train ride.

This 'crashed' DC3 is not really rusty stuff as it is made from aluminium. Plus it was actually a plane used as a movie prop and then moved to Kuranda for tourist enjoyment.

Just to help you understand the general level of culture in Australia, here's a central gift item in the Kuranda Railway station store. Kangaroo scrotum bottle openers - a gift for all.

  Ok, it was touristy-- but really fun.

Paul