Cairns

Cairns is a beautiful city. This was where we were based for the week, in a lovely little guest house about a 15 minute walk from the main downtown. Downtown Cairns has wide, two-lane avenues with tree-lined median strips, and many historical buildings here, including the beautiful library:

It is a very touristy place, but not really tacky or ugly like some places can get. There was an over- abundance of souvenir shops, all selling pretty much the same thing, and there were just as many tour outfitting agencies, too. Plus the requisite restaurants and cafes. One thing that was really appealing about Cairns was the esplanade, which spans the entire waterfront, from the boat terminals in the south where Smiths Creek enters the ocean, to the other small creek and mangrove swamp to the north. The actual Esplanade (the road) meanders along the water, leaving a large green space of varying widths that encompasses a boardwalk right along the water, separate cycle path (with lanes, no less), plus picnic tables, barbeques, lots of children's playgrounds, and a fantastic skateboard park. There is also a large lagoon, probably five times the size of the one in Brisbane, again because the waterfront here is not suitable for swimming due to the mudflats (Brisbane's waterfront was the river), and the threat of crocodiles.

From our accom- odation we walked through this area everyday. It was fun to watch the kids skate- boarding and riding stunt bikes in the skateboard park, and in the afternoons, there was one tree that was full of rainbow lorikeets - fifty or more, and every once in a while they would all take off and fly screeching overhead.





At the guest house, the proprietor was a native bird carer, and people would bring her injured birds; most of them had just flown into windows and were stunned for a night, but were released the next morning. She did have two permanent birds living there, one was a little black bird that had lost an eye, and the other was a rainbow lorikeet that had neither wings nor tail! At first, when Natalie told me of this, I thought it was cruel to keep it alive, but once I saw the bird I realized that it was doing just fine, thank you. It was feisty, and would hop around its cage with great agility, and didn't seem to be suffering from its disability. It also responded to us when we spoke or whistled to it; it could almost imitate its name, Lori, and would whistle back at me. Here's a picture of Lori:

We spent Sunday around Cairns, swimming in the lagoon, and we went to the local market where there was so much beautiful local produce; huge pineapples were $1.00! We also had Tuesday in and around Cairns, as we waited for our flight back to Brisbane and home.