The village in the forest
Monday, Oct. 10
The realization
begins to set in that the end of our trip is in sight.
Because of the side tours we signed up for, our days often seemed
really long, but the trip as a whole is passing far too quickly.
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| Our ride to Kuranda |
Today we’ve signed
up for an excursion to a place called Kuranda, a town that dates back
to the late 1800s whose orginal draw was gold, then timber, and for a
short time, coffee. The railroad we'll travel on was built to ferry
workers and settlers to the community.
We’ll take a train with old-time passenger cars up into the mountains through a rainforest. The
tracks cross numerous bridges and go through 15 tunnels. Aaron's been
keeping track of them and can give the number of each tunnel for a
while, but then turns up one short. Guess he missed one. But it's OK
because they're numbered and the numbers appear on the wall at the
entrance to each tunnel. We are often inches away from the forest,
and if we were inclined to ignore the rules, we could reach out of
the open windows of the car and touch them. Every once in awhile the
trees part, and we glimpse wondrous vistas.
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| Barron Falls |
The train stops once
on our trip at an overlook where we get off the train to view Barron Falls, which we
are told can be quite impressive after heavy rains.
The PA announcer on
the train encourages passengers to check out a shop at the train
station in Kuranda that specializes in tea and scones, so Sharon and
I do. The tea is nothing special, just a tea bag with hot water
served in a Starbucks style cup, but the scones – oh, my. The woman
who takes our order tells us they have a fresh batch and brings us a
couple of large scones with “creme,” a whipped cream that really
doesn't have much taste to me, and strawberry jam.
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| The valley from the train |
I like scones, but
the ones I can find back home really aren't much, especially when
compared with the ones we had in Ireland. These scones were light and
fluffy, almost cake-like, causing a near rapturous state in my mouth.
I'm not usually a fan of strawberry jam, but I have had some I liked,
such as the homemade jam served with our popovers at Acadia National
Park in Maine, and the jam in Kuranda easily matched what we had in
Maine. Not a bad start to our time in Kuranda.
Did I say that
Cairns was a tourist town? Kuranda, though much smaller, could be the
picture by the definition of tourist town in a dictionary. In the
middle of the 1900s, tourism had begun to take over the primary
purpose for the railroad and the town. In the 1960s, the town became
a bit of a hippie haven. Now, at one end of the town lies the train
station and a skyrail station. At the other are a variety of
attractions. In between is a scenic walk along the main street of
town, which is lined with shop after shop -- many featuring local
arts and crafts -- interrupted only by restaurants.
Our eventual
destination is the Koala Gardens, one of three wildlife attractions
that lie next to each other. Their credit card machine is down, and I
don’t have enough cash on me. The guys do and go ahead while I
prepare to run back to an ATM I’d seen back down the road. The
cashier hears me and tells me about a machine that lies around the
corner.
When we return a
couple about our age is standing at the register having a discussion
about who really wanted to see the attraction. The husband tells the
wife he doesn't want to go, but she can. She replies that she thought
he wanted to see it. This goes on a bit longer, and they decide that
neither wants to see it that badly so they leave.
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| These are the critters Brandon fed. I don't have a good shot of them eating from his hand. |
The gardens are
basically a small zoo, filled with a variety of native Australian
animals. One of the cool features is a section where the animals,
mostly wallabies and other smaller marsupials, roam free, and
visitors are welcome to feed them. Aaron gets some nice pictures of
Brandon feeding one of the animals, which gently takes the food
straight from his open hand.
I see one of the
critters -- a wallaby, I think -- bound across the compound, and it’s
an amazing sight. Effortless hops propel the animal at least the
length of its body, and it only takes a half dozen hops or so for it
to cover the width of the area. A fenced-off area lies adjacent to
this section to which the animals are rotated so they can de-stress
from hanging out with the humans.
Of course we see
koalas, along with a number of other exotic animals, including other
marsupials and freshwater crocodiles. These latter look a lot like
caimans, which I think are the same thing. I look it up later and
find out the two are closely related but not the same species.
We wander through
the exhibits until time comes to be heading back. We have a specific
departure time on our tickets for the skyrail ride back to the
outskirts of Cairns to catch our bus back to the hotel. Tony has made
it sound as though we’ll miss the bus if we fail to jump on the
skyrail at the right time, which makes me nervous. We stop at one of
the restaurants to grab a bite to eat, and I’m afraid I annoyed
everyone fretting that we wouldn't receive our food on time to eat
and make it to the skyrail.
Fortunately the food
comes, and we have enough time to eat without having to wolf our food
down. Turns out there’s some leeway built in to allow passengers to
visit a couple of lookouts on the way down, and when we arrive at the
bottom of the skyrail we have to wait a bit before the bus shows up.
I should have been more relaxed; I hate being a pain to those around
me, but apparently I have a natural talent for it..
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| The skyrail |
The ride is
spectacular. You glide above the rainforest on the way to the bottom.
At points the tram car slows to a barely perceptible crawl, so slow
you wonder if you’re about to be stuck a couple of hundred feet
above the ground and become the subject of one of those rescue
stories you see on TV. But then the car slowly picks up steam, and
the journey continues.
We make two stops on
the way down. One of the stops provides a view of Barron Falls from
the other side – you can see the train and its lookout from there,
and the other takes you down a path where you can view native flora,
The path ends at a lookout that shows an open view of the valley and
surrounding mountains. Pick any superlative to describe the scene;
it’ll fit nicely.
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| The water skiing place |
Near the end of the
skyrail journey, the forest opens up, revealing a plain below. We see
a small body of water to our left that looks sort of like a track.
We’re trying to figure out what it is -- something to do with water
treatment, perhaps? -- when we see movement on the water. A water
skier is being pulled around the water. Don't know if it’s just a
ride or a way to learn water skiing, but it's a novel concept.
The rest of the
evening is ours. Sharon and I leave the guys to their own devices and
make plans to do some souvenir shopping. We walk into town, having
identified a quartet of likely shops to visit. I’m looking for
something called a travel pin, a pin that shows some tourist
attraction that I can attach to my bush hat. Sharon’s trying to
find some inexpensive items for people from her workplace who’ve
asked her to bring them something.
We find what we’re
looking for, and while walking back to the hotel, we’re treated to
a sight Tony had told us to watch for. As dusk sets in, large bats,
so big that Sharon initially thinks they are birds, stream across the
sky. These are a particular kind of fruit bat found in Australia they
call flying foxes, This particular bat, the spectacled flying fox,
only resides in Queensland, the state Cairns is located in, and their
nightly flights have a tourist draw equivalent to the bat flights at
Carlsbad Caverns or Congress Avenue in Austin. Wonderful way to end
our last night in Cairns.
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