SINGAPORE AIRPORT - 14/09/10 - 11:28 UK TIME

BA's Nick Cave compilation at 6am uk time, at an altitude of 37,000ft, with an outside air temperature of -57oF through airline headphones, in the southern hemisphere, still sounded good after 4hrs of sleep.

Waiting for onward flight to Cairns via Darwin. Looking forward to more sleep - also by that strange trick of time, we've missed lunch and will never recapture it.

CAIRNS AIRPORT - 15/09/10 - 8AM OZ TIME (GMT +10)

We arrived after 25hrs in transit. Most of the time spent adjusting time pieces and with thick sausage fingers and a cheap asda digital watch, believe me that can take some time. Makes a change from reading and sleeping.

Welcomed at Cairns International Airport by:

1/ an over zealous sniffer dog, that thought she could smell food in Amie's (and everyone else's) bag. Amie doesn't have uneaten food in her bag!

2/ The interesting calls of strange birds and

3/ The familiar sight of a house sparrow.

Waiting at NOMADS hostel to register at 1pm (we arrived at the hostel at about 10am). Then shower/short snooze/food and an early night. Don't yet feel anymore tired than following a tortuous journey to a Greek resort.....we'll see!

Looking at Kuranda scenic railway and skyrail tour as a substitute for not moving up to cape tribulation. Think we will stay here for 3 nights, then head south.

CAIRNS - 16/09/10

Walked the Cairns Esplanade (swamp) - beautifully laid out board walk, pelicans, Ibis (?) and fiddler crabs in the mud. Cairns has wide dual carriageway tree lined roads with low rise buildings. Very clean and good public facilities; man made swimming areas, children play areas, water sculptures and relaxing/chilling areas. Southend council would have a field day felling the trees and concreting every bit of greenery in sight! Even the hostel food is top notch and far more than even Amie can tuck away.

KURANDA SCENIC RAILWAY AND SKYRAIL - 17/09/10

My turn for a bit of blogging! Today we did our first tour; the Skyrail cable car, Kuranda village and Kuranda scenic railway on the way back. The day started with a pick up from the hostel at 9am. After a 15minute drive we arrived at the sky rail. This was a cable car/gondola which could hold 6 passengers. We had one to ourselves. Initially quite scary as you whizz away from the safety of the ground and are suspended by a mere cable, being taken ever higher. The sky rail travels above the rain forrest with spectacular views. The first stop, where you could take a 15minute board walk around the rainforest and to a lookout point. We were fortunate to be in time for the guided tour, the guide was very informative, knowledgeable and humorous - everything you'd want a guide to be. We were then back on to the next gondola and travelling once again over the rainforest, where we could just about make out the scenic railway train and the Barren falls. Barren falls was our next stop and this time you could take the slightly longer board walk, this time with lookouts across to the waterfall. Along this walk a couple in front of us were taking photos of something on the forest ground just next to the pathway. At first I thought it was a snake but it had 4 legs and a long tail, it looked a bit like an iguana. We took photos too which we'll put up and you can decide what it was! Anyway once it started to move, I said it's time for us to go cos I didn't want it coming near us lol

We got our photos of the water falls, visited the information centre and headed on to the next part of the sky rail which would take us on to Kuranda village. Here there were lots of places to eat and visit and lots of tourist shops. We stopped first of all for tea and scones - yum yum!!! Then walked on to the Koala Gardens, Birdworld and Butterfly sanctuary.

Tabby - I did as you requested and held a koala! It was a chore but orders are orders lol. They are so cute, very soft and not too heavy. The ones that were just on the trees seemed to be camera shy and never turned their faces towards the camera, so it was good to have one with the koala. Shame I couldn't have got it into my rucksack! We then fed the kangaroos/wallabies - it was quite a small enclosure for them but since they just seemed to lay about waiting for people to feed them, perhaps they don't need a larger space.

We also saw small crocs, not my favourite - ugly things but took some photos anyway.

On to Steve's favourite place - birdworld. Loads of exotic and native birds including Blue & Gold Macaws, Eclectus parrots, crimson finches and cassowarys. The various types of parrots were flying towards and landing on people. Fortunately they didn't land on me. We made our way round, trying to spot the various different birds on the a4 card we were given. As we made our way back to the beginning one of the parrots decided to land on Steve. We think it was the Eclectus parrot. I took quite a few photos and a video. The parrot didn't want to get off of Steve and even after he managed to get the bird off of him, it flew back on him again. Steve looked good with a parrot on his shoulder, and he said he'd like one :o) (If only they weren't so expensive).

The last place we visited was the butterfly sanctuary. This was the most difficult place to get photos - since they tend not to sit about for people to take photos! We had a guided tour here too, where we were shown the laboratory where they help the eggs along to ensure they keep the population of butterflies and moths up. Apparently 50 of the butterflies/moths die every day. They grow many different plants as the various species of butterflies will only lay their eggs on certain types of plant - the orchid butterfly will only lay on citrus plants. In the lab, they have spaces for each part of the butterflies life - from egg, to caterpillar, to bigger caterpillar to butterfly. In the space for the butterflies and moths, they had a Hercules moth. This is a very large moth, it's wing span can be as much as 15cm, although this one wasn't quite that much, it wasn't far off! It only lives for 3 days and doesn't develop any feeding organs, only those which are needed for reproduction.

We had a short walk back through the village, I had a banana bongo ice-cream (which was delicious) and then onto the railway for the scenic train journey back to Cairns. This was lovely but I don't think it was as good as the sky rail part. Also towards the end of the journey I was falling asleep, worn out from the busy day and probably still suffering from jet lag! There were amazing views though and it was worth doing to round off the day.

Tomorrow we head south a short way to Mission beach. Although there's not much there, we plan to spend a few nights just relaxing before moving on again.

Photos from our first week will follow soon.