Well we finally got to Cairns. Actually we were going to stop at Hinchinbrook, but we decided to go on to Cairns so that we could visit the rainforest at Kurunda. The trip from Cairns to Kurunda is a tourist trail and is by olde worlde train up to the village and by cable car back. It’s pretty good. 

The railway goes up some very steep mountains and is pretty interesting. 

Anyway this is the happy couple in the train – Rob obviously letting anybody who cares that England won the 2003 rugby world cup (and almost as importantly - Australia didn’t).

A view from the train showing one of the many bridges. Gill was really worried about these bridges and how deep the associated ravines were, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that for much of the way up I could see almost vertically down the side of a cliff on the side of the track.

The train stops at three stations Cairns and then another to let people on, then up the mountain to a place called Barron Falls, which really is only a viewing point and nobody lives there.
The river that flows through Kuranda is called the Barron, and it was dammed in the forties or so to generate hydroelectric power. It is pretty neat. The river is pretty small, although it is supposed to be much larger in the rainy season. It has a really small dam on the top of a cliff – not much more than a weir really. The water actually flows through pipes inside the mountain and comes out at the power station at the bottom of the cliff. The height of the cliff generates the pressure to turn the turbines and there is no real lake at the top. If they had been just a little more careful at tidying up the scar in the mountain, nobody would have known anything about it, as the water rejoins the river at the bottom of the cliff, only missing the waterfall – which must be pretty spectacular in the rainy season. 

At the Barron Falls station there is a pretty spectacular view. In the middle of this picture you can just see the sky-train, which is a 7 mile long cable car ride. Also in this picture is the Barron Falls cable station, which is absolutely invisible from this side (The cable car trip is split into two sections – I suppose otherwise the cable will get pretty heavy. (I think of 100 metres of anchor chain being heavy – and it is – but what would 14 miles of 1 inch thick cable weigh?)

This is the Barron River, just a few hundred metres from the village of Kuranda and a few hundred metres before the dam. The river is 100 metres wide or so and only foot or two deep, so as you can see there is no lake and no dam to be seen.

This is one of the resident (freshwater) crocs  that we saw from our river boat cruise seemed weird a riverboat cruise at the top of a mountain. God they are evil looking bastards!. However this photo makes him look pretty big, but in fact he’s only about three feet long, and most of that is tail – really they’re not much bigger than the large lizards that live here, and to be honest, not that frightening. Apparently the aborigines will go swimming with them, but that just proves it – they are crazy!

This is the view from the cable car looking down to the final station. The trip is pretty spectacular, with the cable going at great height over many gorges. At other times it brushes the virgin rainforest and this is about the first time that you see any signs of human intervention – apart from the cables obviously!

This is the headlines in the Cairns Post, whilst we were there! 

Actually the beach is really non-existent and all muddy, but either way there is no doubt that there are saltwater crocs about and they are seriously nasty and can get up to 7 metres long. Where we were anchored in the river we had about a half mile dingy ride to the marina (where we get off). It focuses your attention that in those muddy waters live creatures that are twice as long as the dingy, maybe 10 times as heavy including the passenges,  faster and definitely man eating creatures. I was always glad when we reached the shore or the boat. That said, we never once saw a salty!

So as soon as we get to Cairns, we have to turn around and head South. It doesn’t really seem right, but it will take us three months to get back to Brisbane and out of cyclone territory. Cyclone season up here coincides with the rainy season and stretches from January to March. Can’t really see the attraction of being in a cyclone. It’s just one more thing tht is queueing up to kill us! 

So first step on the way back is Fitzroy Island. It’s so good we couldn’t miss it! Sat down to feed the fish and almost immediately this beauty appeared. It’s amazing really how soon these fish appear from nowhere. He was about a foot round and whilst I couldn’t get him to eat out of my hand, he certainly wasn’t frightened of us.