Our day trip to Kuranda

The coach picked us up at about 0800 and we headed off to Freshwater Station to pick up the train. When we got there the check in desk was very inefficient and quite disorganised and something I will write to them about when I get home.

The train arrived promptly for our one hour forty minute Scenic journey but quite frankly for most of the route any views were blocked by tunnels, trees and high sided cuttings. It should be called a Historic Railway and not a Scenic Railway. The only decent view was when we reached Barron Falls which were great as there has been loads of rain recently and the falls were very full.

The train was quite busy with allocated seating but the tour organisers need a whippin’ to get the planning in order. The village of Kuranda was quite commercialised with many shops selling everything from Didgeridoos to dresses and crocodile heads to leather belts, not really our style. We made a visit to the ‘Butterfly Sanctuary, the butterflies were really colourful and quite large in some cases. One was so large it could pick up a person and carry them off for lunch!!!

The German lady who gave the tour was quite interesting in a German sort of way and loved talking about the elongated mating process. IT IZ OFZEN THEY MATE FOR ZEE 24 HOURSZ AND ZEN THEE BOY IS TIRED- (I should think so to) or something like that but she did make it very interesting.

We had lunch at a little café selling traditional Aussie pies which were very good indeed.
We walked down to the river but we were aware that the boat rides had been cancelled and when we got there we could see why. The river must have come up several feet and there was quite a lot of rubbish from the forest lying around.

The trip back on the SKYRAIL, which in fact is a cable car, travels across the top of the tropical forest for about one hour and fifteen minutes. Your make two changes en-route and can look around at those stations, for me and Jennifer this was the highlight of the trip.

The coach took us back to the Apartment and we quickly rented a taxi to take us to the Airport to pick up our hire car. We had requested a Toyota Camry, the same type of car that we had in New Zealand and the check in staff confirmed that one was available but when they printed out the documents we had been given a Hyundai something or other. We complained and they upgraded us to another Toyota with the same body as the Camry but a six cylinder engine, very nice indeed.

Tomorrow we leave for Townsville on our route down to Sydney where we shall arrive, we hope, on the 29^th.