The most reasonable way to reach Cairns in our opinion is by internal flight. It’s really far up in the north. It’s part of the state of Queensland, but totally different from the southern part. The first thing what hits you is the heath! It’s tropical – day and night!

In Cairns itself there is not that much to see. The highlights would be the swimming lagoon at the beach front. Other thing we liked was a market, mainly for fruits, held on Fri-Sat-Sun. In the center, there is also held night markets from 5 pm every day, there can be found some nice cheap food as well. There were the bat season while we stayed, and near bus station there were few trees packed with bats. Luckily we didn’t watch those with open mouth, as one of those bastards dropped shit on Marja’s shirt.

The botanical garden is also big and pretty, we went to run there one morning.

The thing in Cairns are the tours out from the town. They keep on selling these everywhere, and it’s hard to distinguish the companies from each other, also the prices are pretty much the same.

Our solution to see as much as possible was to rent a car for three days, it was very cheap (our recommendation: East Coast Car Rental, http://www.eastcoastcarrentals.com.au/). Our small Hyundai had very low fuel consumption, so it was really affordable.

We drove first to Atherton Tablelands, to see the lovely scenery with lot of farms. It’s nice drive up with serpentine road. On the way, we stopped to check Cathedral Fig Tree in Danbulla state forest. We found also the platypus animal in Yungaburra Platypus Viewing Area, yes, we saw it (tho no photo available)! Curtain Fig Tree was another impressive old tree on our way.

There were lots of lovely waterfalls too. The nicest were the Millaa Millaa falls.

It was a bit tricky to find a place to stay over in the Tablelands, and we needed to drive back to the coast in darkness, and had a night in lovely Palm Cove. There was also a lovely beach with stinger protection net (safe to swim) and a long pier.

TIP! Search your accommodation before darkness (before 6 pm!), the receptions of campsites close around 6 pm, and in the dark it’s anyway hard to see the signs etc.

We spend one day in supposedly the oldest rain forest of the world, in Daintree forest. It’s easy to drive there, you only need to cross the Daintree river with a little ferry (26 AUD return per car). There are all the national park paths available for free to walk around. Swimming wasn’t possible as there were stingers on the beaches and besides the crocodiles could come from the rivers.

The walks in the forests were relatively short (max 1 hour) and easy, so it was really perfect place to see.

On our way back south from Daintree forests, we stayed one night in a very traditional hotel in Mossman. It looked like a house from Western Films, and it was quite special in all ways… Very cheap tho. Our original plan was to check also Mossman Gorge, but once getting there to the information center, we decided we’ve already seen enough of rain forest and the compulsory bus tour (9.10 AUD) wasn’t appealing to us, we would have liked to rather walk ourselves. We thought it was a bit strange to warn how “the Aboriginals don’t like people walking through their land” and how “the shuttle bus cannot secure they pass walkers safely”…

The coastline north from Cairns is absolutely magnificent! The nicest spots to stop by are in our opinion Port Douglas and Palm Cove. Photos from Port Douglas.

The highlight and meanwhile also the biggest reason to drop to Cairns was the Great Barrier Reef. We had a day tour there, quite randomly booked via tourist information among dozens of options. In our trip there were way too many people, and it was with very basic services (http://downundercruiseanddive.com.au/evolution_cruise.php). If they have in the leaflet that there is a lunch, they shouldn’t be announcing in every five minutes that “don’t eat too much so that everybody gets some”. The fruits were only for the fast ones, same with the stinger protection suits (strange!). Nevertheless, it wasn’t the main point, they anyway brought us up to almost to the outer reefs. We got to snorkel twice, and especially for the first timer Marja it was such a unique experience, and no words can describe what it was like. Well, you just put your face to the water, and you see a totally different world! The colorful fish, the valleys and mountains of the reef… When you are on the edge of a reef formation, you feel you fly, as the bottom is so far away, but with the clear water it’s no different if it’s water or air. And when you feel some scary looking fish is too close, you just lift your face from the water and you are again in the “normal” world. Absolutely the best ever! Unfortunately we didn’t have any waterproof camera, so the images are in the nature documents and in our heads.

In our last night, we met the first Finnish since Coffs Harbour WRC, Annica and Juuso! It was great to hear from them how it is to stay in Australia for longer period and what it is to work in here too. Great to catch up with you guys and good luck for the rest of the stay!

 

Next, we will take another internal flight, and head to Tasmania! Looking forward to the colder climate 🙂