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Epic Gap Year Travel Adventures! - Stunning Photos and Articles! – This page is all about Cairns, East Australia on our round the world trip.

Stop 3 - E. Australia > Cairns

Cairns - East Australia
Gap Year Travel Journal

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(2nd - 3rd April) Cairns - First Visit
So here we are on the East Coast of Australia for the third leg of our amazing trip. And what a welcome we got! We landed at 4.40 in the morning so had to kill a couple of hours in the airport before the campervan depot opened. We rocked up, tired and drained by the journey from Perth and the high humidity to face news that a tsunami was expected to hit the coastline within the next two hours as the result of an earthquake in the Solomon Islands! Yikes! Fortunately they sorted our van out quickly and sent us on our way with advice to head for the high ground at Kuranda. Unfortunately, the rest of Cairns had decided to head there too, along with every other road heading in to he mountains, all roads gridlocked. Not knowing the area at all it was difficult to know what to do, but we turned around and headed back to the town and frantically found a road with a steep hill and stopped to listen to the radio coverage. As the predicted time of the tsunami wave hitting came and went, starving hungry by now we decided enough’s enough, let’s find somewhere to have breakfast – the great bulldog spirit eh? Sitting drinking tea while in the midst of adversity! In the end the wave thankfully didn't hit the east coast, but unfortunately a 5m wave did hit the Solomons wiping 13 villages off the map. What a great place to have breakfast – in the Botanical Gardens. It takes your breath away how lush and green this whole Far North Queensland coastline is. It is called the Wet Tropics and it is hot, humid and wet! 30 degrees and 100% humidity, cooling to 28 degrees at night. And it ain’t called the Rainforest for nothing! We are at the end of their rainy season and it has rained every day but as you’ll see from the photos further up, we have still had some moments of sunshine to appreciate the spectacular panoramic views and beaches. We initially were given an older worn out campervan but they took pity on us and allowed us to go back the next day and change it for a newer one, great service! (Britz Campers). So now we are back in Priscilla version 2 – home from home – but with the addition of two vital pieces of equipment – a fan and a heater! Hurrah! The photos here show the botanical gardens and our campsite and a rather scary sign we saw by the most beautiful lake filled with waterlilies in the middle of town.

(8th - 11th April) - Cairns - Second Visit
Despite all the rain we've had of late we did finaly get a clear day where we could actually see the tops of the mountains behind Cairns so we jumped at the chance to go on Skyrail - a 7.5km long cable car that travels over the huge rainforest to the town of Kuranda at the top. We wanted to do Skyrail up and then the Steam Railway back down but there had been a landslide because of the rain and the track was closed just below the Barron Falls so we ended up doing Skyrail both ways. The photo showing the cable car gondolas shows just what the landscape was like the whole way. Nothing but mountains and rainforest as far as the eye could see and not a building in sight. The bird song up here was awesome! The photo of the river down between the tree covered mountains is the Barron River and the steam train runs along the mountains on the right hand side of the gorge. There are two stops on the cable car and the photo of us both together was taken at the Barron Falls near where the hydroelectric powers station is that produces the electricity for Cairns city. The photo of Jo stood on a boardwalk amidst rainforest is also at this stop off – how beautiful is all that foliage? At Kuranda, the final stop, we wandered around the small village which is mostly tourist shops. The highlight for us was the Butterfly Sanctuary, apparently one of the largest flight areas in an aviary in the world. We actually got to see the Ullysees (the giant electric blue butterfly) up close although they never stop flying which is the reason for the size of the aviary. We also saw the Cairns Birdwing (the largest Butterfly in Australia) – here is a photo of the male in all his bright coloured glory – the upperside of his wings which you can't see here are a vivid fluorsecent green. The female is bigger than him but she is black and white.They also had one rare giant Hercules moth (Bigger than your open hand!) here too that had just hatched from his chrysalis and would only live for about 3 days so they planned on releasing him that day to go off and breed.
The photo of Mike standing on a rock was taken at the Crystal Cascades – a series of small waterfalls at the Barron River comes down over rocks through a really deep gorge. We actually camped near here – surrounded by nothing but mountains and rainforest – gorgeous! You can see another waterfall shown here too and the flower photo was taken on our walk up through the gorge. As beautiful as it was though there was ever present danger here too as you can see from the photo of the sign. This is no ordinary stinging nettle - you'll be hospitalised and unwell for weeks! The photo with the kids on bikes shows Lake Placid, next to campsite. Mike loved camping here as it was such a quiet campsite out the back of Cairns we virtually had it to ourselves and the sounds of the forest at night were fantastic.We were sat at the lake one day having a coffee when two kookaburras flew onto a tree next to us and gave us a fantastic laughing exhibition. You can't help but smile when you hear a kookie laugh!

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