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 discover something new. On this occasion we discovered something that has been under our nose in NSW for quite a while … that is Daniel Boyd the artist and his work 'Bitter Sweet'. Daniel is a local of Cairns, his great great grandfather was a slave who was brought to Queensland to work on the cane fields. Daniel's work resides at the NSW Art Gallery.

Besides the amazing artwork of Daniel it was an eye opener to learn that over 60,000 slaves were brought to Queensland to work cane fields. Yes you read that right 'slaves' … who knew Australia was part of this sad trade. This was definitely something none of us knew.

Next stop was The Esplanade and a welcome change from the dark Daniel Boyd exhibition. Very much like The Strand in Townsville. I love torturing the kids with long walks and this was a good one. The boardwalk was cool, heaps to see along the way with the different parks and water features. The salt-water lagoon was awesome.

Some shopping and a quick return to the caravan park so the kids can end the day as we always traditionally do on holidays, in the pool. Tonight the kids also got to have dinner with their grandfather who lives up here.

Tomorrow we are expecting some more rain so we are headed to an aboriginal cultural centre in the morning before hitting up the pool and the bikes in the afternoon.