Australia: Around Cairns

We had a stop over in Brisbane on our way from Auckland to Cairns, which proved to be a little exciting. As there was very little time between the flights all the connecting passengers were told by the airline to stay together. We were rushed through immigration and customs and raced to pick up our bags, where we waited for 10 precious minutes for a family who had taken their time going through duty free! When they sauntered in we were told to group together and get taxis to the other terminal as (having waited so long) we now didn’t have time to get the connecting train! We decided the airline could be responsible for the fare. After all that excitement we had a pleasant flight on to Cairns. On that trip I was sitting beside a nice man called Kevin who kindly gave us a lift to our hostel.

Anxious to start seeing Australia we booked ourselves onto a tour out to the Great Barrier Reef for the next day, which saw us boarding our cruiser at 7.30am. During the day we went snorkelling in two different spots. First we stopped at Michaelmas Cay and enjoyed snorkelling close to the beach. The coral and fish were beautiful and this time when I saw a manta ray I didn’t scream and swim away as fast as I could! Sean saw a black tipped shark which could have caused that reaction from me had I seen it though! Our second stop was somewhere with no land in sight and decent waves. I found it easier to dive with my snorkel than keep breathing just under the surface! It was already hitting us how many Irish there are in Australia, especially in the touristy areas of the East Coast, as half the boats passengers seemed to be Irish. We had avoided Irish tourists for most of trip so far, so it was coming as a shock to be surrounded by so many Irish accents again.


Our next trip from Cairns was up to Kuranda on a gondola over the rainforest. En route the gondola stopped to let us have a quick walk through some of the rainforest and also to see Barron Falls, a lovely waterfall that would be amazing if it hadn’t been so dry at the time! In Kuranda we walked through the markets reminding ourselves of excess baggage charges before getting the train back down to Cairns again. The train trip was more fun than the gondola as we went through the forest and could see much more than just treetops!