Cairns

Over the past 10 days I been having lots of fun and relaxing times in Cairns. Cairns is a small city and very tropical. It's full of partying backpackers and coach loads of older people on their holidays. There's plenty to do here with the reef and rainforest so close.

We had a couple of days of rain to start with so I made the most of the weather and went white water rafting on the Tully river for the day. The town of Tully is one of the wettest in Australia and the river is raft-able all year round as the water input is controlled by a dam. The town was badly damaged in cyclone Yasi this year so I think the residents are pretty happy that the rafting is still drawing people to the town. It was a fantastic day and I had a great group who were considerably more adventurous than the other boring bunch and our guide realised this, so we took harder routes down the rapids, hung back so we could go for swims, rapid surfing and flip the raft. We even got wedged between two boulders and took a route down a small but practically vertical waterfall that the guide had never rafted before!

One of the reasons everyone visits Cairns is to have a day out on the Great Barrier Reef. I was in two minds about the reef. There are probably over 100 different companies who will take you out on the reef and a lot of the boats go to pontoons that have swimming pools, sun decks, water slides, hot showers etc and then will charge you a small fortune to go and see the fish. I wasn't so keen on this as I'd been diving in tropical waters before, so it's all going to look the same. On the other hand, it's the Great Barrier Reef, and I'd get some stick at home if I didn't see it, so I booked a day out to go diving. I visited the outer barrier reef where a lot of the slower boats can't get to, so it was nice that there weren't many other boats around. I'd only ever been diving from small fishing boats so it was a completely different experience on the double decked shiny new boat that I was going out on. The staff were great and I had to do very little with my gear which was good and our guide was even on hand in the water to take our fins off as we were getting onto the boat! The diving was great fun, the coral was massive and I saw a 2m long reef shark and got very close to a Green Turtle which was amazing. The big disappointment of the day was the fact that the reef is huge and yet we kept going past other dive groups. I didn't understand why everyone was in the same area. I'm glad that I went out on the reef as it was a different experience to diving in the past as you obviously pay a lot more than in Asia and you get a better service. My diving improved and I got to use a dive computer which I'd never used before. As for the Great Barrier Reef, it was nothing special compared to other tropical reefs but I guess that there is big money to be made from its name.

I also did a day trip into the Atherton Tablelands and to Paronella Park which is south towards Innisfail. Everyone in Ravenswood told me how beautiful this area of Australia was and they weren't wrong. Green fields, hills, lakes and waterfalls made it just like England but with different trees and the sun shining! Our first stop was a wildlife cruise on volcanic crater Lake Barrine which was really nice and despite the lake of wildlife there was a very interesting commentary on the rainforest trees. One of the interesting facts I do remember is that there are no male eels around for 1000km. The female eels swim down the creeks and out to sea to New Caladonia to find a male friend and then only the females make the trip back to the lake. There is a tea room on the lake so I treated myself to cream tea which was so good. I was surprised to see a tearoom in the middle of rainforest but apparently it was set up 100 years ago when the road was single lane and the gates to the road only opened for 2 hours at a time in one direction so you had to wait up to 2 hours before you could get down to the coast. We also stopped at a waterfall and the Giant Curtain Fig tree which is basically a fig tree that's grown on a branch of a host tree so the roots have grown down from way above ground level. The main reason for the trip was to go to Paronella Park which is the equivalent to going to a National Trust house in England. Spanish man Mr Paronella bought the land on the banks of Mena Creek and decided to use the water from Mena Creek Falls to create the 1st hydroelectric plant in Queensland in 1933. He then built his own castle, complete with a ballroom, theatre and cafe. The castle is now an empty shell and is falling down but it was still really interesting to walk around. The highlight to the whole day was seeing a wild Cassowary just metres away!

Cairns has been a nice town to just hang around in. There's a shopping centre and a swimming pool on the water front so it's been good just to sit and do nothing for a while. I met my friend Yoko for lunch which was lovely to catch up. I shared a room with Yoko in Ayr in March when we waited for farm work. I promised that I'd see her in Cairns but I didn't think it would be 7 months later! I've also had a long walk up Mount Whitfield in the north of the city which was great fun through the rainforest, if a little sweaty and lots of mosquito bites. Another very touristy thing to do is the Scenic railway to Kuranda which was really disappointing as you could barely see out the windows as the people sitting by the windows had their heads out of them taking photos. The main views were rocks on one side and trees on the other. I actually enjoyed the bus trip back more, as the driver stopped so we could see the view over Cairns and the coast.

Today is my last day in Cairns and it's very cloudy after torrential rain last night so I guess I won't be doing anything today!