Cairns Part II

[Added a few photos]

On Sat. the 18th, we finally took a day to relax! We said we’d sleep in, but of course everyone was up between 7 and 9 since we’d been getting up early every day (guess who was the one to stay in bed til 9…). We all did our own thing, which really led to all of us doing the same thing… shopping and going to the lagoon.

Cairns, despite the fact that it’s a major tourist destination, is really a small beach town… even though there is no beach. Supposedly the shore used to be beautiful, but by the 1930s it was just a muddy mess, most likely caused by the dredging of the ocean floor to keep the paths for ships open. When the tide goes out, it’s hundred of meters of sludge, where seagulls, pelicans, and other birds peck for food. Bird watchers line up with cameras aimed, but they’re sure to stay behind the crocodile warning signs.

Luckily, Cairns has done wonders to keep the shoreline an attractive place. The esplanade boardwalk stretches from the marina to far out of the main “city” area. The whole thing is accompanied by grassy areas filled with skate parks, exercise equipments, barbeques, snack stands, and children’s playgrounds. The highlight is the lagoon, a community pool with its own sandy beaches and palm trees.


[notice that behind the pool there is mud as far as the eye can see]

The town itself is nothing spectacular. The tallest buildings are the hotels, and it has its mall, shops, restaurants, and one million and one places to book excursions. As Ivicic said, “I’ve seen pictures of Cairns. I’m not impressed.” But looking around, you’re met with the sight of tall rainforest-covered mountains whose peaks are hidden by white fluffy clouds, so you certainly can’t complain about the view. Travel out of town and you’ll pass sugar field after sugar field. They even have a special railroad to carry the crop.

Overall I liked Cairns. It seemed relaxed. True, I didn’t go out at night and I did read an article that called it a party city, but it didn’t seem like somewhere that was totally wound up (it’s no Surfers Paradise). One thing I loved were the night markets. Crepes, Chinese buffets, gelato, crafts, cheap Australian souvenirs, clothing, massages… I ended up there a few nights. Actually, one thing that shocked me about Cairns: it’s the only place I’ve been here where most stores in town are open past 5:00 more than one night a week! Crazy!

Sunday Helena was doing homework, while Karin and Hanna were doing a tour that included the Tjapukai Aboriginal cultural center, the train to the mountain town of Kuranda, and a skyrail down the mountain. TripAdvisor had told me that Kuranda was a tourist trap and that the train was smelly and crowded, plus the trip was ridiculously expensive, so I decided that I would just head to Tjapukai on my own. Karin and Hanna experienced it with hundreds of their fellow travelers, while I got there in the afternoon and saw each of the shows with an audience of 3 to 7 people. There was a movie about the mistreatment of aborigines, a show about Tjapukai people’s beliefs, like how they categorize the world into wet and dry – you are what your father was and you must marry someone of the opposite. Another show was about dance. They showed us how to make fire. There was a presentation on playing the didgeridoo and about bush food. The food one I found pretty interesting – she told us which foods could be eaten fresh and which were toxic unless cooked or dried in the sun or run underwater for days. The woman told us which ones were good for sickness and snakebites. She said that, of course, aboriginal people now eat their McDonald’s and whatnot, but she would try bush food and medicine on her children first and only take them to the doctor if it didn’t work.

At the boomerang and spear throwing lesson, I was all by myself. My spear throwing skills need serious improvement, but I did successfully throw a boomerang. The guide said the small, returning ones are really for practice and fun. Bigger ones for hunting are too big to actually return. I told the guy how I couldn’t find anything but plastic triangle boomerangs at home, and he told me I could buy the type I was throwing in the gift shop. Then after a few more throws he told me I could take one with me, for free. I don’t know why – I think he just felt bad for me that I was by myself, haha!

According to the people working there, there are probably about 10,000 Tjapukai in 10 communities in the Cairns region. They also assured me that the aboriginal people working there really were from the Tjapukai tribe.

That night, the girls and I went to go get ice cream. We were out past 10:00 – such party animals!



Monday, we decided to take a walk to the Botanic Gardens. We decided to go past the lakes first… sure we saw some itty bitty frogs and some sunbathing turtles, but the lakes themselves were algae-covered and disgusting, and we were getting bit by mosquitoes like crazy. We got out of there as soon as we could and found a café in whatever town we ended up in (Edge Hill?). We asked for directions to the Royal Flying Doctors Service visitor center and the girl working at the café told us they were great people and they had rescued her twice.

If you don’t know, the RFDS is kind of an airplane ambulance. The doctors and nurses visit clinics way out in the middle of nowhere outback, and they also fly out in emergencies to take people to hospitals. Services are free, funded a little by the government but mostly by charity. They fly out about 100 people each month and there are fifty-some stations in all of Australia. There was an airplane we could go inside of, so we sat on the seats and laid in the stretcher. It was really interesting to look at the displays of thank you letters from people they had saved, as well as the equipment used, especially in the early days (it was started by a priest with all the right connections – check him out on the $20 bill): a medicine cabinet where all medicines are numbered so patients don’t have to figure out names, a pedal-powered typewriter that converts messages into morse code. I also liked the information about the school of the air - in the outback, kids who are too far away from civilization get to go to school through radio.

On Tuesday we went to Fitzroy Island. I LOOOOOOVVEEEE Fitzroy Island. There were actually a few things that could have ruined this day – the rude staff, the 6th grade class on the boat, and one other incident I’ll talk about later – but I loved the Island. It was a 45 minute ferry ride there, and we pulled up in Welcome Bay and discover that the beach there is made completely of washed up coral. White coral, while not the most pleasant thing to walk on, looked absolutely beautiful and the water was clear and blue.



We grabbed our snorkeling gear and made the 10 minute walk through the rainforest to Nudey Beach, where, as the name indicates, clothing is optional but luckily everyone kept their clothes on. On the walk, we kept passing skinks – reptiles that I normally think of as the size of salamanders but these things were HUGE. Like a foot long. They kept scaring the crap out of me. I think only 10 of us went to that beach at that time and the 4 of us went around a corner so that we could see no one else. Our own private patch of white sand, coral, blue waters, and the mountainous shoreline in the distance. When I first went snorkeling I went to the left, past some boulders. I was face to face with a few fish as soon as I went underwater, but only found one small patch of coral around that side. I found a school of what I thought were squid (I learned later they may have been cuttlefish) and followed them around, which they didn’t seem to appreciate, but they were fun to watch and became my new favorite animal of the day.



When the girls went to go get lunch, I stayed to snorkel more, and went by the rocks to the right, where everyone else was – no wonder everyone else was here – this is where all the coral was! Fitzroy and the island like it (the more crowded Green Island) used to be mountains on the mainland a bazillion years ago until the sea level rose and “fringe” reef formed around them. I did my usual following around schools of fish and scaring the little ones to go hiding in coral. It was awesome. Although especially open spots, deep spots, shallow spots, or cold spots make me nervous, haha.

I went back to Welcome Bay for our glass bottom boat tour. The marine biologist told us that this area of reef has more species than all of the Caribbean Sea. Crazy.



After that, I went snorkeling again till it was time to leave. I noticed that some of the boats around the island were on the move, but didn’t know what was going on till I was back on shore. Back on Nudey beach, someone had found one of the snorkelers floating in the water. They did CPR on him for 20 minutes on the beach before getting a boat to take him back to shore. A guy on the ferry said he came across the beach while they were doing CPR and that the man did not look alive. They thought he had been underwater for 10 or 15 minutes. They tried to get a helicopter but couldn’t get one right away. Helena especially was really shaken up about it. The next day in the paper she read that he was alive in the hospital. I was sad to tell her that on the 5:00 news they said that he had never woken up and died that morning. A 39-year-old British tourist. They blamed the death on “snorkeling complications” which I think means they don’t know what happened.

So that was a little scary.

There were also 2 girls (from Sweden! The 3rd group of Swedes we’d run into) who climbed down some rocks and got stuck as the tide came up, so they had to be rescued by boat.

The guy we talked to on the ferry though, he started talking to me because of my George Mason shirt. He graduated from JMU a few years ago and lives in Maryland now and does government contracting, something involving NIH. He was in Brisbane the week before on business. Did a Moreton Island tour like we did – except his jeep got stuck during high tide and his tour group had to be rescued! He said he climbed to the summit on Fitzroy and that it was a gorgeous 360 degree view, even though he may have passed a deadly brown snake to get there.

Wednesday and Thursday were more days relaxing in town and by the lagoon.

As far as spending 2 weeks with Swedish girls, I only learned a few phrases, and the only ones I remember are, “1, 5, 6” and “I live in...” I forget "My name is", "I love you" and the rest of the numbers from 1-10. They tried their best to remember to speak English for me, but I let them get away with Swedish probably more than I should have, haha.

After doing so much, I thought I was ready to head back to Canberra, but Friday morning when I woke up and it was once again a 30 degree (around 90 F) sunny day, I had to ask, Why are we leaving?


PS - My birthday, for which nothing was planned, turned out to be great. It was definitely one of those "I am really going to miss these people" nights. And instead of last, we came in second place in trivia! Whoo!!

Thanks to everyone for birthday wishes, cards, money, gifts, and love. :) xoxo!