We are now back from our fabulous week in Far North Queensland. We spent two days in Cairns and 5 days in Port Douglas, about 45 minutes north of Cairns. We saw Paronella Park, took the skyrail tram up to Kurunda, walked through the Mossman Gorge, took a Daintree River Cruise, drove up to Cape Tribulation and snorkelled off the inner Great Barrier Reef. We travelled by just about every means imaginable and really need a weekend of R and R to get ready for the work week.
Cairns Lagoon
We started our trip in Cairns, where we spent one day looking around and one day driving to and from Paronella Park. Cairns is a city of about 150,000 people. It is a city that is right on the coast, but that section of the coast is all mudflats, no beach, so they have built up a great park area and lagoon for swimming. It looked like it was very well used and enjoyed by everyone.
We went to Paronella Park to see the ruins of a modern castle that was started in the 1930s. It is a pretty neat place to wander around and it really has a "tropical ruin" feel about it (in a good way). The main castle building looks out over a water fall that was the source of the first water-powered generator in the area. The Park actually had power before the nearest town of Innisfail!
Main Castle at Paronella Park
There is a guided tour to one end of the park, then the guide leaves you on your own to find your own way back to the entrance. There a plenty of places to poke around and they also give everyone a bag of fish food the feed the fishes. We somehow managed to attract a very scary looking eel to our feeding spot!
Scary looking but harmless eel
On Monday we drove to the "skyrail" station to take us to the town of Kurunda. The skyrail offers some really beautiful vistas of the area and of the rainforest canopy. There are two stops within the rainforest, so the whole ride up takes about an hour.
Rainforest from the skyrail
We had about 4 hours in Kurunda, which is a pretty small town. We went for a jungle walk, had a long lunch and looked in every possible shop and gallery the town had to offer. There is an old train that takes about 90 minutes to get you from Kurunda back to a little transfer point that is about 5 minutes from the skyrail station.
Kurunda Train
View from the train
The train has cars are from the early 1900's to 1930's and run pretty slowly along a winding track. There is narration that highlights some of the difficulties in building the railway and the hardships that early settlers encountered. There is plenty to see and, at the end of the train, plenty to be thankful for, since neither one of us can imagine living in that hot of an area without air conditioning or running water!
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