Some Photos

Some of my favourite shots from the wildlife/National parks we visited near Cairns and Port Douglas.

Kangaroo



Colourful Caterpillars, near Cape Tribulation





Lizard scurrying along beside a crocodile



Dragonfly on crocodile



Sleeping wombat



Ring-tailed lemur



Some empty insect casings I came across in Undara Volcanic National Park



I don't know this one, but looks like a kind of pigeon or dove.



Kookaburra



A snake on a tree branch as we went underneath it in a ride on an amphibious vehicle



Emus



Cassowary



and finally, an old chook!

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Windy Hill Wind Farm

Some info here.

Cairns - Further Afield

Paronella Park




We had seen this old ruined Spanish castle, set in a tropical garden, on tv recently (the tv show linked to is an old one; the hydro-electric plant it referred to is now working again) and decided to visit as it was only one and a half hour's drive south of Cairns.

The place had an intriguing story of a Spanish immigrant who came to Oz in 1913 as a sugarcane cutter, made a fortune and built his dream of a pleasure garden with the castle. It had a ballroom, tennis courts, a tunnel-of-love hewn out by hand, waterfalls, its own hydro electricity and cinema.



The above photo shows the waterfall with a suspension bridge above and, on the right (and below), the building that housed the hydro-electric turbine.



In a part of Queensland which had no electricity at that time, this hydro scheme provided electricity for the park. The cinema projector is now in the park's museum.





Some other garden shots:





Bats on the ceiling on the old Tunnel-0f-Love.



Some of the lovely ferns among the ruins.



We saw baby Golden Orb spider (so called because the web is golden, not the spider), which, when fully grown can catch and eat small birds.

Rating:

Undara - The Lava Tubes

Undara is about a 4 hour drive west of Cairns. The landscape here is different, no longer tropical rain forest, but savannah grasslands.



In this privately run National Park, we stayed overnight in converted railway carriages.





I've never seen so many kangaroos in the wild and so close up.









We came to Undara specifically to see the lava tubes.



A section where the roof has caved in.



Moonrise over old volcanic craters.



Cheryl took this shot of bats flying out of the lava tube after sunset.



We also took a walk up to the rim of the Kalkani Crater

Rating:

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Cairns Attractions

Great Barrier Reef
We were in Brisbane, on our way to see the Reef in 1974, when we had a phone call from home (Singapore, at that time) regarding a family emergency.
The Reef trip was aborted, and we never made it back till now - 2011!

Photo above shows us leaving Cairns in our wake on the way to Upolu Reef and Cay near Green Island.

2 views of the Reef above

However, the Reef was a big disappointment. The day was too choppy and rough for a decrepit snorkeler like me and I didn't get to see much. The little I did see was all murky, probably because of the choppy seas.
HYK did tell me that having been 30 years ago, his most recent trip to the Reef was disappointing.
Of course, the Reef stretches down to Bundaberg, I don't know what the rest looks like on a good day.
In contrast the Ningaloo Reef off the NW coast of WA offers better value for money. It's beautiful, calm and right on the sea shore - not an hour and a half out to sea.

The Cay was good fun though, and the lunch was good.

Rating on the day:

Australian Butterfly Sanctuary - Kuranda
A very enjoyable hour or so was spent here.

Rating: