I flew up to the wettest part of Australia, the state of Queensland and the city of Cairns. Here in this city of about 160,000 people, annual rainfall is measured in feet (or meters) not in inches. Cairns was established in the late 1880's to support the gold boom up here. At this low latitude it's very tropical and at the end of the monsoon (hurricane) season. I was lucky, I got one out of 3 days here with no rain, the other 2 were heavy, but that's the way of life up here.
The city was fun, it had a long esplanade filled with restaurants, and a cool night market. In the Banyon trees above the streets of the city giant bats hung throughout the day then squawked as they took off at sunset flapping their wings which were up to 4 feet across!
Also up here was the chance to visit the great barrier reef. That was a bust, I took a boat to Green island on the edge of the reef, but the weather was bad, a monsoonal storm with buckets of rain. I scrapped the snorkel plans and took a glass bottomed boat. At least I made it to the Reef.
More rewarding was a 7km cable car ride over the top of the rain forest south of Cairns, an amazing ride with stops to view huge waterfall of the Barren river. Also stopped at a small village in the forest, Kuranda, where I visited a butterfly sanctuary, took an amphibious boat ride through the forest, and observed some Aboriginal locals demonstrate boomerang and spear throwing.
This was a great visit of this part of Australia. Next the great city of Sydney.
- Bill
