We had a long day today. We started early at 6am to catch the train to Kuranda. The train is over 100 years old and was built to connect Cairns to the gold fields. It was a big project and over 30 people died making the train. The trip took an hour and a half. During the trip we stopped at Barron waterfall for 10 minutes. We liked the train trip, it was cool riding in 100 year old carriages. I fell asleep a few times on the train ride. When we got to Kuranda we...

We knew the weather wasn't going to be great today, it's been raining all day, so we decided to do something "inside". We went to the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Centre. It was really good and we all loved the tour. We started with face painting. They used the traditional painting they used on themselves and painted each person's face with different colours and designs. Olivier and Philippe did it, I managed to get out of it. J We then moved to the theatre whe...

Today we expected a wet day and it turned out not so bad. It rained lightly on and off. So our wet weather plan was to head to Cairns CBD and do some exploring. Thanks to the free CBD shuttle run by the caravan park we were soon in the city. Cairns is very much a tourist town, pretty laid back but still has a bit of a country town feel you expect of a coastal/rural town. We walked around and soon happened upon the art gallery. Holidays are a great way to discov...

We will miss Paronella Park. We left Paronella Park early morning to hunt down a wild Cassowary. Dad is pretty set on seeing a wild one. He spoke to people at Skywalk and they told him that they knew of some in Etty Bay which is not far away. We drove down to Etty Bay and we ran straight into one. It was a young bird and it was very interested in us. It looked friendly but Dad reminded us how dangerous the birds are. Our Lonely Planet book even reminded us to al...

We said goodbye to Mission Beach today after an amazing day yesterday. Our first reef experience was memorable. First stop today was Ma-mu Tropical Skywalk. The walk allows you to explore the rainforest from the forest floor right to the top of the canopy. What is interesting is that you get to see how the forest has changed thanks to Cyclone Larry and Cyclone Yasi. It was also interesting to understand how the rainforest changed thanks to logging. The 10 metres...