Day ten

Today we went to Kuranda. We got on our bus driven by Mick, a John McCain lookalike/ stand up comedian/bus driver – he made the journey interesting; talking to pensioners about his days as a dope smoking hippy and the perils of getting hot rocks in between the sheets. Very amusing. We got to Cairns Central train station where we boarded the Kuranda scenic railway; an old 1930s train to take us up the windy (as in full of twists and turns not full of gusts of air) tracks through the mountain ranges to Kuranda village in the mountains. The journey was really beautiful. It takes you all through the mountains and forest, over Barron Gorge and Barron River. The train takes the path of a railway line that was built to link the mountains to the coast and that was a built entirely by hand in the late 19th century. It’s quite a feat of engineering really as the track carves through some pretty treacherous territory and the on-board commentary tells you some of the stories of those who built the line.

Kuranda village is full of little things to do: lovely shops, museums, art galleries and, of course, wildlife sanctuaries! We first stopped in a café for some refuelling and then went to the Kuranda Koala gardens. I should explain that for those that don’t know this is where I went two years ago and held Irwin, the 2yr old Koala. Well this time, a baby Koala had just come out of his mother’s pouch for the first time and his dad was Irwin! He was sooooo cute! He was only eight months old and just the tiniest little thing ever. His name was Little O. Mark and I then took turns to cuddle a Koala which was great. Her name was princess and she was very fat and furry and nice. I mentioned to the girl that I had previously held Irwin and she told me that he was in isolation as he’s going through the grumpy teenager stage and has started biting. She then said we could go up to see him if we wanted, so we got to go back stage at the zoo which was cool. Whilst up there we saw a cockatoo and it said hello to us, which was very exciting. Then, after a bit more cooing at Little O, we went and fed some more wallabies and kangaroos and headed to the venomous animal zoo. It was great looking at all the snakes and spiders until the guy got a tarantula out which wasn’t so great. I held a Shingleback Lizard which was cool – they’re great little guys, they mate for life and when one dies, the other starves itself to death. I also held a Blue Tongued Lizard and a Black Olive Snake – Mark politely declined to hold any of them. Wuss.

We mooched around Kuranda until it was time to catch the Skyrail back down to Cairns. The Skyrail is a really, really long cable car that goes for about 5km over the most spectacular scenery. You cruise in a little pod over the canopy of the forest and can look into the trees and see all the life of the rainforest from the air. It’s really good and we took way too many photos.

We just got back from a HUGE curry in town which was very nice. Had ice cream on the way home which was really good I had lychee and blood orange and Mark had mint and toblerone. Yum yum yum

Us xxxxx