Cairns

Cairns is on the coast of Northern Queensland – one of the most popular access points to the Great Barrier Reef. But as a coastal town it’s not quite what we expected. Gary and I have got used to tropical beaches over the last few months, and they usually look pretty different from beaches you’d find in the UK: crystal blue water, white sand, and no tide to speak of. A bit of a contrast to Swansea bay where a huge expanse of sand is exposed at low tide but on the very highest days the water virtually laps the coast road. Oh, and the water is more grey than blue there too! Strangely for the tropics, Cairns beach was more like Swansea – we arrived at high tide after an evilly early flight from Sydney and wondered why the sea looked brown from our balcony. Several hours of recovery later we wandered out onto the front to discover the answer - the sea had retreated on the tide, leaving a vast expanse of exposed mudflats. Not quiet what we expected when visiting the Great Barrier Reef!

We actually stayed a little out of the centre of town in a self-catering apartment. This proved to be much better than getting a hotel room – as the apartment block owners were decorating the pool area throughout our stay they gave us a free upgrade, so we stayed in an enormous luxury flat complete with full size kitchen, dining room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, two balconies, and even a laundry cupboard! We even had two-full sized sofas to laze on in the evening after our long wanders into the centre of Cairns.

Actually wandering into town along the waterfront was probably the nicest thing about our trip. Even with the tide out and the huge mudflats exposed it was a really pretty route and you could see lots of creatures along the way. Pelicans preening their feathers, stork-type birds wading for fish, fruit-bats dangling from the trees or whizzing about at dusk, or little purple crabs scuttling into sand holes. The one disappointment was that we didn’t see any crocodiles! Ben had warned us back in Brisbane to stay off the beach in Cairns as there are meant to be huge salt-water crocs that come across the mud to dine on the odd tourist every now and then. So we’d really been looking forward to a bit of croc-spotting. But we didn’t see one of the devils all week! Not even when some kids and their parents were helpfully acting as bait by wandering along the sand! Grr!

Anyway, of course the main reason we came to Cairns was to see the Great Barrier Reef. This also proved to be trickier than we’d imagined – we had originally planed to scuba dive here, but this ended up being unfeasible for a really irritating reason. When I was a child I was diagnosed with mild asthma. Very mild mind you – so mild I’ve been able to ski race internationally, compete in I don’t know how many other sports and climb Kilimanjaro. Oh, and of course scuba diving in the past has never affected my breathing at all – asthma is not considered a problem in most places as long as it’s mild. And mine is milder than mild! But in Queensland they are more than a little touchy about such things, and after a barrage of mixed comments we were told (at the last minute before booking) that I wouldn’t be able to dive without seeing an Australian Dive Doctor first. Crazy unnecessary paperwork to satisfy a litigation culture. But we couldn’t get around it. And as we’d been told this wasn’t needed when we asked earlier in our stay we didn’t actually have time to see the Doctor and get the box ticked. So no diving. Sob.

They couldn’t stop us from snorkelling however. We went out to Green Island - a coral Cay. This is a small island formed over time from debris collecting on the sheltered side of an exposed section of reef. Mum wanted to see the reef from an island base as she tends to get a touch of sea sickness… and the wind had been blowing with avengeance ever since we’d arrived at Cairns! So we waited as long as we could for it to die down, which never really happened. Mum had a ride on a glass bottomed boat and semi-submersible while we snorkelled… and so she got to see the cool sucker fish in the photo below. We didn’t find any of those, but did see some startlingly big parrot fish and a large sting ray!

Anyway, we’ve now returned to New South Wales to go to the Blue Mountains. And after tropical Queensland it’s more than a bit chilly!