Kuranda

Today, as promised, your intrepid explorers boarded the Kuranda SkyRail for a fan-bloody-tastic ride above the canopy of a tropical rain forest. The SkyRail is a chairlift with 100 odd Gondola's that take you from a "suburb" of Cairns to the mountain top village of Kuranda 7.5km away. There are two stops along the way, the first has a rainforest boardwalk so that you can see the fauna up close (like the Kauri Pine below), while the second takes you to some lookouts over the Baron Falls in the Baron River Gorge. The wet season hasn't started yet so there was only a trickle of water running over them but you can imagine how magneficent they would look if the river in the river was in full flow!

At Kuranda we explored the many tourist markets in the village - it's a bit like the towns on Mount Dandenong only more so, and set in a tropical jungle! We had pretty decent lunch washed down by a few beers, as well as a visit to the Butterfly Sanctuary. After a few hours we took the Kuranda Scenic Railway back "home" to Cairns. This was a rail system bult in the late 1800's as part of the Gold Rush and has been refurbished for Tourists. It gives you another view of the rainforest as well as a sense of the difficulties the workers went through to construct the railway line. There are 13 tunnels along the way, some of which had to have the rock removed by hand!!

The train ride was pretty good but was a bit cramped and hot. We would totally recommend the SkyRail, so I guess it makes sense to take the scenic railway as well while you are at it like we did.

It was a quite relaxed day, but at the end of it all we are pretty well exhausted. Time to rest up for tommorow's early start for our trip to the Great Barrier Reef!!!