One of the
things we were keen do in Cairns, was ride up on the Skyways Cable Car, spend
the day in the town of Kuranda and catch the train back down the mountain.
Since we were spending so long in Port Douglas, and we had already seen the
rest of Cairns, we decided to do it as a day trip from PD instead.
We took the
coast road to Cairns, which is rather like the Great Ocean Road and I think
just as impressive. Admittedly it doesn’t have any apostles to look out for, and it’s a little shorter, but its still a super impressive 45 minute drive.
The cable
car ride was fabulous! One side had great views down on the rainforest, and the
other side had great views out over to Cairns. There are 2 stops on the way up,
where you do little boardwalks through the rainforest. Both are only about 200m
and we were amazed how many people don’t bother to get off and enjoy them – they were the highlight of my day!
I also enjoyed looking down on the forest from the gondola, and was so pleased
to spot a Ulysses butterfly fluttering by.
I did have
a footwear disaster on the last boardwalk and blew out a thong, but the town of
Kuranda is famous for its markets and shopping, so I didn’t think it would be a problem for long.
Interestingly, the markets were rather disappointing. We were there after the
season and many stalls were closed. Most of the remaining ones were very
touristy, so I was forced to choose between Aussie flag thongs, boomerangs,
aboriginal art, frangipanis or pop art. Guess which I went for?
There are
free shuttle buses to get from the cable car to the other end of town, but we
chose to walk past the shops and galleries. We spent a good half hour watching the sugar artists at work, rustling up some delicious mango lollies. We've never the seen entire process before and it was truly fascinating. Of course the best bit was the taste testing...
Kuranda has a koala park, a bird
sanctuary and a butterfly place and we chose to visit the butterfly place. We
had a ball spotting the stunning local butterflies, pleased that they weren’t dead and pinned to a board like at the museum
in the Daintree! We joined a guided tour and got to see the place where they
hatch. They actually had 2 of the enormous Hercules moths, which had hatched
the night before. They are incredibly rare and were to be released into the
wild that night so we were rather lucky to see them.
Apparently you
can visit all three attractions in the one day, but I don’t see how you could possibly do more than rush
through without appreciating anything. We were happy with only doing the one.
We made our
way back to the car by riding on the scenic railway back down the mountain. It
was quite a long ride, at 1.5 hours, and I slept through most of it! In
hindsight, we would recommend taking the cable car both ways. Unless you are a
train nut, or have a little one who LOVES train rides, I’m not sure the rail ride is worth the time. We
also needed to catch a free shuttle bus to get between the train station and
the cable car parking, but it is such a common requirement they were very well
set-up for that.
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